149 Fun Facts About Michigan

Which city is the capital of Michigan?

Lansing took over from Detroit in 1847: lawmakers wanted a capital nearer the middle of the state and further from British Canada, whose troops had captured Detroit in the War of 1812.

What are Michigan's two main land masses called?

Michigan's two land masses are the Upper and Lower Peninsulas, separated by the Straits of Mackinac and linked by the Mackinac Bridge since 1957.

The Mackinac Bridge, which joins Michigan's two peninsulas, is roughly how long?

The Mackinac Bridge is about 5 miles long, 26,372 feet end to end; it opened in 1957 and hosts the Labor Day Bridge Walk each year.

Michigan's Lower Peninsula is famously shaped like what?

A mitten: asked where they live, residents hold up a hand and point to a spot on the palm, and the bulge on the eastern side is known as the Thumb.

How many of the five Great Lakes touch Michigan?

Only Lake Ontario misses it; the state also borders Lake St. Clair, giving it 3,288 miles of freshwater coastline.

Which inventor grew up in Port Huron, Michigan, selling newspapers and candy on the train to Detroit?

Thomas Edison moved to Port Huron at seven and at 13 became a newsboy on the Detroit train, spending his free hours on science books and learning to work a telegraph.

Michigan's name most likely comes from an Ojibwe word, mishigami, meaning what?

'Large water' or 'great water' is the usual reading of mishigami, and it suits the state: about 42% of Michigan's total area is water, a higher share than in any other US state.

Before statehood in 1837, Michigan fought an almost bloodless border 'war' with Ohio over which city?

Toledo stayed with Ohio: Congress made Michigan give up the strip to win statehood and handed it most of the Upper Peninsula instead, land later prized for its ore.

General Motors was founded in 1908 in which Michigan city, later the scene of a famous sit-down strike?

Flint, then the carriage-making 'Vehicle City', is where William Durant built GM around Buick; in 1936-37 workers occupied its plants for 44 days until GM recognised the United Auto Workers.

The Upper Peninsula has almost a third of Michigan's land but what share of Michiganders?

About 3%, roughly 300,000 of 10 million at the 2020 census; in the ore and timber boom of the early 1900s more than one Michigander in ten lived there.

Residents of Michigan's Upper Peninsula are known by what nickname?

Yoopers is 'U.P.-ers' said aloud; they return the favour by calling Lower Peninsula residents 'trolls', because they live 'under' the Mackinac Bridge.

Which handheld meat pie is the Upper Peninsula's signature food?

The pasty arrived with Cornish miners in the mid-1800s, a full meal they could carry underground and eat without cutlery; Calumet still honours it each summer with a Pasty Fest.

What is Michigan's official state bird?

The American robin was chosen in 1931 with the backing of the Michigan Audubon Society; its sponsors called it the best known and best loved of all the birds in the state.

Michigan's state flower is the blossom of which fruit tree?

Apple blossom, strictly the native sweet crabapple: the lawmakers who chose it in 1897 praised it as one of the most fragrant and beautiful flowered species of apple.

What is the Petoskey stone, Michigan's official state stone?

The Petoskey stone is fossilised coral, Hexagonaria, about 350 million years old; its six-sided pattern shows only when wet or polished, and it is named for an Odawa chief.

Which Ice Age animal is Michigan's official state fossil?

The mastodon won the title in 2002 after a 'Mastodon for Michigan' campaign in which middle-schoolers built a life-sized paper replica; its bones have turned up at more than 250 sites in the state.

What is Michigan's official state tree?

The eastern white pine was named state tree in 1955 as a symbol of the lumber boom: in the late 1800s Michigan produced more lumber than any other state.

Michigan's Latin motto translates as 'If you seek a pleasant peninsula,' followed by which instruction?

'Look about you' ends the motto on the 1835 state seal; it is said to echo architect Christopher Wren's Latin epitaph in St Paul's Cathedral: 'If you seek his monument, look around you.'

Which animal is Michigan's official state reptile?

The painted turtle got the title in 1995 after a group of fifth-graders in Niles discovered that Michigan had no state reptile and asked lawmakers to name one.

Which French officer founded Detroit in 1701?

Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit on the strait in 1701; two centuries later a Detroit carmaker took his name, and its crest is based on his coat of arms.

Detroit is the only major US border city where you travel in which direction to enter Canada?

South: Windsor, Canada, sits directly below downtown across the river, so the 'South Detroit' of Journey's 'Don't Stop Believin'' doesn't exist; Steve Perry just liked how it sang.

Why is the Ambassador Bridge from Detroit to Windsor unusual among major border crossings?

Privately owned: Detroit trucking magnate Manuel 'Matty' Moroun bought the 1929 bridge in 1979, and it passed to his son Matthew after his death in 2020.

Which company joined General Motors and Ford as Detroit's historic Big Three automakers?

Chrysler, formed by Walter Chrysler in 1925, launched Plymouth and DeSoto and took over Dodge Brothers within three years, giving it the range to stand beside General Motors and Ford.

Ford's Model T was nicknamed what?

The Tin Lizzie sold more than 15 million: Ford's moving assembly line cut build time from over 12 hours to 93 minutes, and the price of a new one fell to $260 by the mid-1920s.

In 1914 Henry Ford stunned industry by paying his workers how much per day?

$5 a day roughly doubled the going wage; Ford hoped a bigger paycheck would stop workers quitting his monotonous new assembly line, where yearly turnover had reached 370%.

America's first mile of concrete road was laid in 1909 on which Detroit thoroughfare?

Woodward Avenue's concrete mile cost about $14,000; the same road now hosts the Dream Cruise, a huge classic-car parade that began in 1995 as a fundraiser for a children's soccer field.

Berry Gordy Jr. founded which record label in Detroit in 1959?

Motown, a mash-up of 'motor' and 'town', grew from Tamla Records, which Gordy started in January 1959 with an $800 loan from his family's savings fund.

What is Berry Gordy's original Detroit label headquarters, now a museum, known as?

Hitsville U.S.A. was a former photographer's studio that Gordy bought in 1959: he lived upstairs, turned the back room into Studio A and kept it recording 22 hours a day.

Which pop star, born in Bay City, Michigan in 1958, won a Michigan dance scholarship?

Madonna was born in Bay City on 16 August 1958, grew up in Rochester Hills and gave up a University of Michigan dance scholarship to move to New York in 1978.

Eminem's 2002 film is named after which Detroit-area road?

8 Mile Road runs along Detroit's northern city limit and has long stood as the dividing line between the mostly Black city and its wealthier white suburbs; the film's 'Lose Yourself' won an Oscar.

Battle Creek, Michigan is nicknamed 'Cereal City' as the home of which company?

Kellogg's grew out of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where, in the usual telling, the Kellogg brothers hit on flaked cereal in 1894 while working on the patients' diet; W. K. Kellogg launched the company in 1906 to sell corn flakes.

Vernors, which a Detroit pharmacist is said to have first served in 1866, is America's oldest surviving what?

Ginger ale: in a company legend now doubted, James Vernor left his syrup in an oak cask when he went off to the Civil War and came home to find it transformed.

Detroit-style pizza is baked in rectangular steel pans that were originally made for what?

Auto parts drip trays from local factories were what Gus Guerra reached for at Buddy's Rendezvous in 1946; cheese pushed to the pan's edge caramelises into a crisp 'frico' crust.

Faygo, the Detroit soda founded by two bakers in 1907, based its first flavours on what?

Cake frosting recipes the Feigenson brothers had used in Russia became fruit punch, strawberry and grape sodas; in 1921 they cut the name 'Feigenson Brothers' down to Faygo because it was too long.

Which baby-food brand began in a family cannery in Fremont, Michigan, in the late 1920s?

Gerber grew from Dorothy Gerber's hand-straining of food for her seven-month-old daughter Sally in 1927, a chore her husband Daniel moved to the family's Fremont Canning Company.

What has been banned on Michigan's Mackinac Island since 1898?

Motor vehicles were banned after carriage drivers complained that the first automobiles startled their horses; visitors still get around on foot, by bicycle or by horse-drawn carriage.

Which 1980 romance starring Christopher Reeve was filmed at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island?

Somewhere in Time made a star of the Grand Hotel, which was thrown up in just 93 days in 1887 and claims the world's longest porch, some 660 feet from end to end.

Traverse City calls itself the world capital of which fruit?

Cherry: the city's festival began in 1925 as a 'Blessing of the Blossoms' and now draws about half a million visitors each July to a town of under 16,000.

In the Ojibwe legend behind Sleeping Bear Dunes, what did the bear's two cubs become?

The Manitou Islands, North and South, mark where the cubs sank; in one telling the bears were fleeing a forest fire across the lake, and the mother still waits on shore as the great dune.

Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior is famous for a decades-long study of which two animals?

The study of Isle Royale's wolves and moose began in 1958 and is the world's longest continuous predator-prey study; wolves were reintroduced from the mainland starting in 2018.

Pictured Rocks, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, was in 1966 the first place in the US to receive which designation?

Pictured Rocks became the first National Lakeshore in October 1966; its 200-foot sandstone cliffs are streaked by iron, manganese and other minerals leaching out of the rock.

Tahquamenon Falls in the Upper Peninsula is nicknamed 'Root Beer Falls' because of what?

Tannins turn the water brown after leaching from the cedar swamps the river drains upstream; the Upper Falls then drop about 50 feet over a brink more than 200 feet wide.

The Soo Locks let ships move between Lake Superior and which other lake?

Huron lies 21 feet below Superior, a drop the St. Marys River makes in rapids no freighter can run; the first lock opened in 1855 to carry ships past them.

How many crew died when the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a November 1975 storm?

All 29 crew died and no bodies were recovered; the ship's bell, raised in 1995, hangs in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point.

The Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan's northern tip, boomed in the 1840s on which metal?

Copper lies here as almost pure metal instead of ore, and Native peoples were working it thousands of years before the prospectors of the 1840s arrived.

Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor is known by what nickname?

The Big House opened in 1927 with 72,000 seats but with footings already laid for more; as of 2025 it holds 107,601, the most of any US stadium, and has topped 100,000 at every home game since 1975.

Which future president played centre on Michigan's undefeated 1932 and 1933 football teams?

Gerald Ford, raised in Grand Rapids, was later voted the team's most valuable player, then turned down offers from the Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers to go to Yale, where he studied law.

Michigan State University, founded in 1855, was the country's first college of what kind?

Agricultural: chartered in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, it is considered the prototype for the land-grant colleges created under the 1862 Morrill Act.

Since 1934 the Detroit Lions have traditionally hosted an NFL game on which holiday?

The Lions' Thanksgiving Day game began in 1934, when owner George Richards scheduled it to draw a crowd and put it on national radio through his own station; only 1939 to 1944 were missed.

Detroit Red Wings fans throw which sea creature onto the ice during the playoffs?

The Legend of the Octopus dates from 1952, when its eight legs matched the eight playoff wins then needed for the Stanley Cup; fish-market owners the Cusimano brothers threw the first one.

The Detroit Pistons of the late 1980s, who won back-to-back NBA titles, were known by what nickname?

The Bad Boys of Isiah Thomas, Bill Laimbeer and Dennis Rodman played to a bruising plan their coaches drew up, the 'Jordan Rules', to wear down Michael Jordan, on their way to the 1989 and 1990 titles.

Which baseball legend, acquired in 1905, starred for the Detroit Tigers?

Ty Cobb debuted for Detroit at 18 in August 1905 and stayed 22 seasons; in the first Hall of Fame vote in 1936 he topped the ballot with 222 of 226 votes, ahead of Babe Ruth.

Holland, Michigan, founded by Dutch settlers in 1847, is famous for which May festival?

Tulip Time grew from a 1927 idea of biology teacher Lida Rogers: the city bought 100,000 bulbs from the Netherlands and held the first festival in 1929; its De Zwaan windmill followed from there in 1964.

Bronner's in Frankenmuth, Michigan, is billed as the world's largest store selling what?

Christmas decorations sell here all year, and in 1992 founder Wally Bronner added a replica of the Austrian chapel that marks the spot where 'Silent Night' was first sung in 1818.

Grand Rapids, Michigan was in 1945 the first US city to add what to its drinking water?

Grand Rapids began adding fluoride to its water on 25 January 1945 in a landmark trial that sharply cut children's tooth decay; the city was long nicknamed Furniture City.

Gibson guitars was founded in 1902 in which Michigan city, also once home to Checker cabs and Upjohn?

The city's Kalamazoo Promise pays public-school graduates' tuition at any Michigan public college.

The 2014 water crisis in Flint, Michigan began when the city switched its water supply to which source?

The local river, the Flint, replaced Detroit's supply in April 2014 to save money; officials failed to add corrosion inhibitors, so lead leached from ageing pipes into the water of about 100,000 residents.

Which is Michigan's largest inland lake by surface area?

Houghton Lake covers about 20,000 acres yet averages under nine feet deep; each winter its frozen surface hosts Tip-Up Town USA, an ice-fishing festival named for the anglers' flag-like tip-ups.

Where does Michigan rank among US states by population, with about 10.1 million people?

Michigan ranked 10th in the 2020 census with 10,077,331 people; by total area, counting its Great Lakes waters, it is the biggest state east of the Mississippi.

Which US state borders Michigan's Upper Peninsula by land?

Wisconsin is the only state the Upper Peninsula touches by land; until the Mackinac Bridge opened in 1957, reaching the rest of Michigan meant taking a ferry across the straits.

Setting small ponds aside, roughly how many inland lakes does Michigan have within its borders?

About 11,000 lakes (11,037 by one count) mean no spot in Michigan is more than six miles from a natural body of water, or more than 85 miles from a Great Lake.

Detroit's rival coney-dog stands American and Lafayette were both founded by immigrants from which country?

Greece gave Detroit both stands: brothers Gust and William Keros, once sheepherders in the village of Dara, opened them side by side, and each shop still claims to have come first.

Michigan Technological University was founded in the Keweenaw in 1885 under what name?

The Michigan Mining School opened to train engineers for the local mines, with four teachers and 23 students on the upper floor of the town fire hall; it became Michigan Tech in 1964.

Michigan's state capital is unusual among US state capitals for what reason?

It is not a county seat: Mason was already Ingham County's seat when the state sited its capital nearby in 1847, and Mason has kept the title ever since.

The Mackinac Bridge's design drew lessons from the 1940 collapse of which bridge, nicknamed 'Galloping Gertie'?

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge shook itself apart in high wind; designer David B. Steinman answered at Mackinac with deep stiffening trusses and an open-grid roadway that wind can pass through.

Michigan's official state gem, chlorastrolite, is better known by what name?

Isle Royale greenstone, whose scientific name means 'green star stone', turns up as small green beach pebbles; collecting it inside the national park is illegal, so hunters look elsewhere in the Upper Peninsula.

Which programme grew from a 2 a.m. speech John F. Kennedy gave at the University of Michigan in 1960?

The Peace Corps began as an improvised challenge: from the steps of the Michigan Union, Kennedy asked students who had waited up for him whether they would be willing to work in countries such as Ghana.

The University of Michigan now enrols tens of thousands; how many students took its first Ann Arbor classes in 1841?

7 students, six freshmen and one sophomore, met two professors in 1841, though the university had existed on paper since 1817, when it was chartered in Detroit as the 'Catholepistemiad'.

Which Canadian team played at Michigan Stadium in 2014?

The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings there in the NHL's outdoor Winter Classic; the game had been set for New Year's Day 2013 until a lockout pushed it back a year.

Which coach's 1901 'Point-a-Minute' Michigan team won the first Rose Bowl game?

Fielding Yost's team finished the season 550-0 on points; Stanford asked to stop the first Rose Bowl with eight minutes left at 49-0, and organisers ran chariot races instead of football until 1916.

Louis Elbel wrote which Michigan song as a student in 1898?

The Victors came to Elbel after a 12-11 win over Chicago: he felt the celebration lacked a song worthy of the victory, so he wrote one himself.

Which Michigan cornerback became the first primarily defensive Heisman winner in 1997?

Charles Woodson beat Tennessee quarterback Peyton Manning to the 1997 award, becoming Michigan's third Heisman winner after Tom Harmon in 1940 and Desmond Howard in 1991.

Coach Fritz Crisler brought Michigan's famous winged helmet design in 1938 from which university?

Crisler first used the winged helmet at Princeton in 1935 and brought the design to Michigan in 1938, partly to help passers pick out receivers downfield.

The Little Brown Jug, one of college football's oldest rivalry trophies, is contested between Michigan and which team?

Minnesota kept the 30-cent water jug Michigan's team left behind after a 6-6 tie in 1903, and painted 'Captured by Oscar' and the score on its side; the two have played for it ever since.

The 'Ten Year War' of 1969 to 1978 pitted Michigan coach Bo Schembechler against which Ohio State coach?

Woody Hayes, Schembechler's former boss at Ohio State, went 4-5-1 against his protégé in the Ten Year War, which decided the Big Ten title almost every season.

Which future NFL quarterback played for Michigan from 1995 to 1999 before going 199th in the draft?

Tom Brady started at Michigan seventh on the quarterback depth chart and lasted until the 199th pick, then won seven Super Bowls, more than any NFL franchise has managed.

In 1871 Sarah Killgore became the first US woman with a law degree to do what?

Be admitted to a state bar: Michigan's took her in 1871, but when she married and moved to Indiana its bar was closed to women, so her husband argued in court while she ran the firm's property work.

Which coach led Michigan to college football's national title in January 2024?

Jim Harbaugh, once Michigan's own quarterback, beat Washington 34-13 for the school's first national title since 1997, then took charge of the Los Angeles Chargers.

In which Michigan city did the Republican Party hold its first statewide meeting in 1854?

Jackson's meeting on 6 July 1854 gathered in an oak grove on the edge of town, a site still known as 'Under the Oaks'; the city itself is named for a Democratic president, Andrew Jackson.

Michigan has more of which structures than any other US state?

Lighthouses, about 150 by the usual count and the first of them lit around 1820, were built to guide freighters and passenger ships along the shores of four Great Lakes.

Which Grand Rapids retailer opened what is called America's first hypermarket in 1962?

Meijer's Thrifty Acres put a full grocery and a department store under one roof; its floors were poured six inches thick so that, if shoppers stayed away, half the building could become a car dealership.

Domino's is based near Ann Arbor, but Tom Monaghan founded it in which nearby city?

Tom Monaghan and his brother Jim bought DomiNick's, a pizzeria in Ypsilanti, with a $500 down payment in 1960; within eight months Jim swapped his half for the delivery Volkswagen Beetle.

Which Lansing-born guard led Michigan State to the 1979 NCAA title over Larry Bird?

Earvin 'Magic' Johnson got his nickname from a local sportswriter after a 36-point, 18-rebound, 16-assist game at 15; he scored 24 in the 1979 final against Bird's Indiana State.

Which Saginaw-born singer topped the US charts at 13?

Stevie Wonder lost his sight soon after a premature birth; raised in Detroit from the age of four, he made 'Fingertips' a number one in 1963.

Which Odawa war chief laid siege to Fort Detroit for five months in 1763?

Pontiac's plan to seize Fort Detroit by surprise on 7 May 1763 was foiled by an informer; the siege ran from May to October, and the wider uprising helped prompt the Proclamation of 1763.

Which city, nearly surrounded by Detroit, elected an all-Muslim city council and mayor in 2021?

Hamtramck, once the heart of the region's Polish community, elected a Yemeni-American mayor and an all-Muslim council in November 2021 after decades of Yemeni and Bangladeshi immigration.

Diego Rivera's 1932-33 frescoes of the River Rouge plant fill a court at which museum?

The Detroit Industry Murals fill the Detroit Institute of Arts' Rivera Court; Edsel Ford paid about $20,000 for the commission, and they became a National Historic Landmark in 2014.

Which chemical giant began in Midland, Michigan in 1897, extracting bromine from brine deep underground?

Dow's founder Herbert Dow beat a German bromine cartel at its own game: when it dumped cheap bromine in America to ruin him, he quietly bought it up and resold it in Europe at a profit.

The bus where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat sits in which Michigan museum?

The Henry Ford in Dearborn restored the bus and lets visitors sit where Parks sat, in the same museum as the chair Lincoln was shot in and the limousine in which Kennedy was killed.

Ford's mile-long Willow Run assembly line built which heavy bomber during World War II?

B-24 Liberators were rolling off the Willow Run line every 63 minutes by 1944, around the clock; Albert Kahn's plant was billed as the world's largest enclosed room.

Which pizza chain opened its first shop in Garden City, Michigan in 1959, decades before its founders bought the Detroit Red Wings?

Little Caesars began as 'Little Caesar's Pizza Treat', opened by Mike and Marian Ilitch in a strip mall; Mike, a former Tigers minor-leaguer, bought the Red Wings in 1982 and the Tigers in 1992.

In 1846 Michigan became the first English-speaking government to abolish what?

Michigan abolished the death penalty for murder in 1846, effective 1847, keeping it only for treason until 1963; the one execution since was federal, at Milan in 1938.

Which species is Michigan's official state fish?

Lawmakers named just 'the trout' in 1965 and took until 1988 to say which one: the brook trout, a native found throughout the state.

Settled by the French in 1668, which is the oldest city in Michigan?

Sault Ste. Marie grew from a French mission of 1668; because the St. Marys River became the international border, it now faces a twin city of the same name on the Canadian bank.

Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, the Belleville Three, are credited with inventing which genre?

Techno grew from three Belleville High School friends who soaked up Kraftwerk and Parliament from a late-night Detroit radio show; Atkins took the name from futurist Alvin Toffler.

The Michigan–Michigan State football winner takes home a statue of which folk figure?

Paul Bunyan, a four-foot wooden lumberjack, was the governor's gift in 1953 to mark Michigan State's first Big Ten season; Michigan's Lloyd Carr called it college football's ugliest trophy, but one you miss.

Since 1976, Lake Superior State University has published a New Year's list of what?

The Banished Words List began in 1976 as a publicity stunt by LSSU's Unicorn Hunters, led by PR director W. T. Rabe, who also staged an annual snowman burning.

Where in Lake Michigan did James Strang reign as crowned 'king' of a Mormon sect?

James Strang had himself crowned king on Beaver Island on 8 July 1850 and ruled the Strangite colony there until he was shot by two disaffected followers in June 1856.

Which 1959 James Stewart courtroom drama was filmed in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, where the real case behind it was tried?

Anatomy of a Murder came from a novel by Michigan Supreme Court justice John Voelker, who had defended the real 1952 case himself; its court scenes were shot in the Marquette County Courthouse.

Which mineral is extracted from a mine lying some 1,100 feet beneath the city of Detroit, Michigan?

Rock salt was discovered under Detroit in 1895, and the mine's main product today is the road salt spread on icy winter highways.

Detroit police officer William Potts, who built a 1920 signal tower, invented which traffic-light colour?

Yellow was Potts's idea for a warning that would shine after green and before red. His signal tower went up at a Detroit junction in October 1920.

Which performer gave his last show at Detroit's Garrick Theater and died in the city on Halloween 1926?

Harry Houdini went on stage with a 104-degree fever and acute appendicitis, then died of peritonitis at Grace Hospital a week later.

Which Michigan community near Pinckney grew up around George Reeves's sawmill, distillery and tavern?

Hell, in one telling, got its name when Reeves was asked what to call the settlement and replied, "You can name it Hell for all I care."

The J.W. Westcott II pulls alongside moving ships on the Detroit River to serve as a floating what?

Post office status gives the boat the only floating ZIP code in the United States, 48222, for mail addressed to crews in transit.

The Grand Hotel, built in 93 days on a Michigan resort island in 1887, boasts the world's longest what?

Porch length is the hotel's great boast: the front one runs some 660 feet and overlooks a tea garden and the Esther Williams swimming pool.

Which union leader was last seen in 1975 at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan?

Jimmy Hoffa is thought to have been murdered in a Mafia hit, and a Michigan judge declared him legally dead in 1982, seven years after he vanished.

Which animal gives Michigan its traditional state nickname despite being extremely rare within its borders?

Wolverine sightings are so scarce that a 2004 photograph was Michigan's first confirmed one since the early 19th century.

Which actor, raised in Birmingham, Michigan, voiced the 'Pure Michigan' tourism adverts launched in 2006?

Tim Allen narrated the adverts over the title music from 'The Cider House Rules', and the campaign went national in March 2009.

Which Canadian singer-songwriter wrote a 1976 ballad about the Great Lakes wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald?

Gordon Lightfoot drew on a Newsweek article called 'The Cruelest Month' and considered the song his finest work.

Which soul singer was first noticed singing gospel at her father's New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit?

Aretha Franklin's father, the Reverend C. L. Franklin, had moved the family to Detroit for good when he took over the church's pulpit.

Which Canadian province is the only one to share a border with Michigan?

Ontario lies to Michigan's east, northeast and north; the two are joined by a railway tunnel opened in 1910 and a road tunnel opened in 1930.

Which colour pairing do University of Michigan teams wear, including on the winged football helmet?

Maize and blue date from 1867, when a group of students declared "azure blue" and "maize" the official colours of the school.

Visitors to Michigan's best-known resort island are nicknamed after which sweet, its favourite souvenir?

Fudge earned day-trippers the nickname "fudgies", and the Murdick family opened the island's first real candy store back in the 1800s.

Which 1984 Eddie Murphy action comedy opens in Detroit, home of its street-smart hero Axel Foley?

Beverly Hills Cop was first pitched as the story of a Pittsburgh officer named Elly Axel, and it became the highest-grossing US release of 1984.

Which hockey great, a Detroit Red Wing for 25 years, gives his name to a bridge linking Detroit and Windsor?

Gordie Howe was a Canadian who became a hero on the American bank of the river, and he died two years before construction of the span began.

De Zwaan, built in the Netherlands in 1884 and moved to Holland, Michigan in 1964, is what kind of structure?

Windmill De Zwaan has been described as the only authentic working Dutch one in the United States, and it was built from parts of even older mills.

Which baking mix brand, best known for corn muffins, has been made in Chelsea, Michigan since 1930?

Jiffy began in spring 1930, when Chelsea Milling Company owner Mabel White Holmes developed the firm's first baking mix made for home cooks rather than for other businesses.

Which Michigan State University mascot found national fame in 1990s adverts for ESPN's SportsCenter?

Sparty appears at games as a foam-rubber figure with an oversized head, worn by a student who stays anonymous.

Which US state shares a land border with Michigan immediately to the west of Ohio?

Indiana shares with Michigan the border region known as Michiana, a name picked in a 1934 contest run by South Bend merchants.

Which 1987 Paul Verhoeven film is set in a crime-ridden Detroit of the near future?

RoboCop's script was dismissed twice by Verhoeven, who did not grasp its satire until his wife convinced him of its value.

Which rock duo, formed in Detroit in 1997, recorded the sports-crowd anthem 'Seven Nation Army'?

The White Stripes worked their way up through the Detroit music scene and released six studio albums before splitting.

Which vocal group began as the Primettes in Detroit's Brewster-Douglass housing project in 1959?

The Supremes, first a sister act to a male group called the Primes, went on to score twelve number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100.

Which Detroit Lions running back retired in 1999, just 1,457 yards short of the NFL career rushing record?

Barry Sanders was only 31 and still performing at a high level when he walked away, leaving Walter Payton's mark standing.

Which furniture company, famous for recliners, was started by two cousins in Monroe, Michigan in the 1920s?

La-Z-Boy was the winning entry in a contest that cousins Edward Knabusch and Edwin Shoemaker held to name their reclining chair.

Which workwear brand was founded in Detroit in 1889 and first grew by outfitting railroad workers?

Carhartt is still owned by descendants of founder Hamilton Carhartt, and its first slogan was "Honest value for an honest dollar."

Which hard rock group released the anthem 'Detroit Rock City' on the 1976 album 'Destroyer'?

Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley had the "get up, get down" riff before he knew what the song was about, except that it was about Detroit.

Which filled Polish doughnut gives Fat Tuesday its popular nickname in Detroit and Grand Rapids?

Pączki were traditionally fried to use up the lard, sugar, eggs and fruit that fasting rules put off limits during Lent.

Which Michigan city is home to Ford Motor Company's world headquarters and the Arab American National Museum?

Dearborn's museum, opened in 2005, was the first in the world devoted to Arab American history and culture.

On which holiday each year are pedestrians allowed to walk across Michigan's Mighty Mac bridge?

Labor Day is the sole exception to the rule keeping pedestrians off the span, and the walkers are traditionally led by the governor.

At a 'Michigan left', which manoeuvre replaces going directly left at a busy divided-highway junction?

A median U-turn, paired with a right turn, gets drivers across without a direct left; engineers also call the layout a boulevard left or a ThrU Turn.

Which boxer is honoured in downtown Detroit by a 24-foot bronze arm and fist commissioned by Sports Illustrated?

Joe Louis's memorial, known simply as The Fist, was sculpted by Robert Graham and dedicated in October 1986.

Chris Webber and Jalen Rose belonged to which nicknamed 1991 University of Michigan basketball recruiting class?

The Fab Five became the first team in NCAA history to play in the championship game with all-freshman starters.

Which actor founded the Purple Rose Theatre Company in Chelsea, Michigan, the town where he grew up?

Jeff Daniels starred in the 1985 film 'The Purple Rose of Cairo', and his father was a one-time mayor of Chelsea.

Which landmark beside Interstate 94 in Allen Park, Michigan was built for the 1964 New York World's Fair?

A giant tire built by the United States Rubber Company carried fairgoers in New York as a Ferris wheel, then became a static Uniroyal display in 1966.

Which punk pioneer co-founded the Stooges in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1967?

Iggy Pop, born James Osterberg, drummed as a teenager in bands called the Iguanas and the Prime Movers before fronting his own group.

Which famous aviator was born in Detroit in 1902, where his mother taught chemistry at Cass Technical High School?

Charles Lindbergh spent little of his childhood in Michigan, growing up mostly in the town of Little Falls and in Washington, D.C.

Which island park in the Detroit River was designed in the 1880s by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted?

Belle Isle covers 982 acres, which makes it the largest city-owned island park in the United States.

Hancock, Michigan, home of the Heikinpäivä midwinter festival, celebrates its settlers from which Nordic country?

Finland's patron saint, Henrik, is honoured at the January festival, which includes a traditional wife-carrying competition.

Which novelist learned to hunt and fish during boyhood summers at Walloon Lake in northern Michigan?

Ernest Hemingway later turned a Michigan fishing trip into 'Big Two-Hearted River', starring his semi-autobiographical character Nick Adams.

Which port city, named after a French Jesuit missionary, is the largest city in Michigan's Upper Peninsula?

Marquette is a major port known chiefly for shipping iron ore from the nearby range that shares its name.

The SS Badger, a Michigan car ferry named a National Historic Landmark in 2016, was built to burn which fuel?

Coal still fired the Ludington ferry in 2016, when it was the last coal-fired passenger vessel operating on the Great Lakes.

Which long-vacant Detroit landmark did Ford buy in 2018 and reopen in June 2024 after a costly restoration?

Michigan Central saw its last train pull away in January 1988, then stood empty until a renovation costing more than $900 million.

The Pistons, named for their owner's piston foundry, moved to Detroit in 1957 from which city?

Fort Wayne was home to Fred Zollner's foundry, and Zollner brokered the formation of the NBA at his kitchen table in 1949.

A leaky milk wagon inspired Michigan road official Edward Hines to introduce which safety feature in 1911?

Centre lines were first painted on River Road in Trenton, inspired by the trail the wagon left down the street.

What does 'Tuebor', the Latin motto on the blue shield of Michigan's state seal and flag, mean?

"I will defend" refers to Michigan's position on a national boundary, and it is one of several Latin mottos in the design.

Which rare songbird, known in Michigan as the jack pine bird, needs dense young stands of that tree to breed?

Kirtland's warbler once relied on wildfire to create its habitat; today foresters harvest mature jack pine and plant seedlings instead.

Which Michigan highlands, named by the Ojibwa, surround Lake of the Clouds and a vast old-growth forest?

Porcupine Mountains got their name, supposedly, because the Ojibwa saw the shape of a crouching porcupine in their silhouette.

Which arts centre near Traverse City, Michigan, founded in 1928, was long known as the National Music Camp?

Interlochen was established by Joseph E. Maddy, and its former students have gone on to collect Emmy, Grammy, Tony and Pulitzer honours.

Which lake between Michigan and Canada, just north-east of Detroit, is sometimes called 'the sixth Great Lake'?

St. Clair honours Saint Clare of Assisi, on whose feast day La Salle's expedition first sighted it.