107 Fun Facts About New Haven

New Haven sits on the northern shore of which body of water?

Long Island Sound carried a British fleet from New York in July 1779, when troops under William Tryon landed on its shore and raided New Haven.

A civic drive to line New Haven's streets with shade trees earned the city which nickname?

The Elm City. Elms planted along New Haven's streets and Green formed leafy canopies until Dutch elm disease killed most of them in the 20th century, though many have since been replanted.

New Haven's original 17th-century street layout is known by what name?

The Nine Square Plan set the town out as a three-by-three grid of blocks and left the middle one open as common land, which survives today as the New Haven Green.

Which hurricane toppled the Lincoln Oak on New Haven's Green, exposing a skeleton in its roots?

Hurricane Sandy felled the oak in October 2012; the bones dated from the years when the Green was the town's graveyard, and thousands of bodies still lie beneath it.

Which Native American people lived around New Haven Harbor before the English arrived?

The Quinnipiac sold their land to the settlers in 1638 in return for a pledge of protection from Pequot and Mohawk raids, and the town was first called Quinnipiac before it was renamed in 1640.

Which two men led the Puritans who founded New Haven in 1638?

Minister John Davenport and merchant Theophilus Eaton led the group, seeking a stricter Puritan settlement than Massachusetts; Eaton served as the colony's governor until his death in 1658.

What became of the 'Great Shippe' New Haven sent to England?

It vanished and was never seen again; townspeople later said a phantom of the ship appeared in the sky after a storm, a tale Cotton Mather recorded in 1702.

What is the West Rock formation where two of Charles I's regicides hid in 1661 called?

Judges' Cave sheltered Edward Whalley and William Goffe, who had signed Charles I's death warrant, from the agents of Charles II; every attempt to arrest them failed, and neither was ever returned to England for trial.

Why did Connecticut's legislature quit New Haven in the 1870s?

A statewide vote in 1873 made Hartford the sole capital, ending an arrangement dating from 1701 under which the legislature alternated between the two cities; the idle State House was later demolished.

Yale moved to New Haven in 1716 from which Connecticut town?

Old Saybrook held a deed requiring the Collegiate School to stay, but in 1716 the trustees voted to move after New Haven outbid rival towns to host it, and Saybrook residents took to the streets in protest.

Elihu Yale, whose gift renamed the Collegiate School, was the East India Company's governor at which post on India's eastern coast?

Madras was where Yale ran the East India Company's fort until the company removed him over charges of self-dealing; years later Cotton Mather hinted the college could take his name in return for a gift.

Which New Haven merchant led the city's Foot Guard to demand the powder-house keys in 1775?

Captain Benedict Arnold, five years before his treason, threatened to break into the powder house unless he got the keys, then marched his Foot Guard to Cambridge; the city has marked Powder House Day since 1904.

Which signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution became New Haven's first mayor in 1784?

Roger Sherman was elected in 1784 and three years later brokered the Connecticut Compromise, the deal between large and small states that gave Congress its two differently apportioned chambers.

Which Yale graduate, who earned little from his famous invention, turned to making muskets near New Haven in the 1790s?

Eli Whitney won a federal contract for 10,000 muskets to be delivered in two years, then took more than a decade to finish them at his armory in what is now the Whitneyville section of Hamden.

Whose statue beside New Haven's City Hall commemorates the Amistad captives jailed in the city?

Joseph Cinqué led the 1839 revolt aboard the Amistad; the memorial stands where the captives were jailed before the Supreme Court freed them in 1841, with former president John Quincy Adams arguing their case.

Which gunmaker produced firearms in New Haven until 2006?

Winchester Repeating Arms grew out of a struggling gun company bought by Oliver Winchester, who had come to New Haven to manufacture dress shirts; its rifles were made in the city until the plant closed in 2006.

Which Catholic fraternal organization was founded at St. Mary's Church in New Haven in 1882?

The Knights of Columbus began as a mutual-benefit society: Father Michael McGivney, a priest at St. Mary's, wanted working-class Catholic families insured so that a breadwinner's death would not leave them destitute.

In 1878, the District Telephone Company of New Haven opened the world's first commercial what?

Switchboard exchange: George Coy built the board from carriage bolts, teapot-lid handles and wire, and from January 1878 it connected the company's 21 subscribers through a central operator.

Louis' Lunch on Crown Street is credited by the Library of Congress with inventing what in 1900?

Louis Lassen served a hurried customer a ground-steak patty as a sandwich in 1900, and the Library of Congress credits Louis' Lunch with inventing the hamburger.

Louis' Lunch is famous for refusing customers which condiment?

Ketchup is off the menu at Louis' Lunch, along with every other condiment: the Lassen family says nothing should mask the taste of the meat, so cheese, tomato and onion are the only garnishes allowed.

Louis' Lunch has served its signature sandwich on what since 1900?

Two slices of toasted white bread were what Louis Lassen had at hand when a customer in a rush wanted lunch to go in 1900, and the family has refused to change the recipe since.

New Haven-style pizza is known locally by what name?

Apizza, pronounced 'ah-BEETS', is baked in coal-fired brick ovens with a thin, charred crust; a 'plain' pizza comes with tomato sauce and grated pecorino but no mozzarella.

Which seafood tops the signature 'white pie' of Wooster Street's pizzerias?

Clams, shucked fresh each day, top Pepe's white pie over garlic, olive oil and grated cheese; the original 1925 menu had nothing like it, offering only a tomato pie with or without anchovies.

Frank Pepe left Maiori, on which stretch of Italian shoreline, for New Haven?

The Amalfi Coast town of Maiori was Pepe's birthplace; he reached New Haven as a teenager, went back to fight for Italy in the First World War, then returned and sold his pizzas from a cart before opening his pizzeria in 1925.

Salvatore 'Sally' Consiglio, whose Wooster Street pizzeria became Pepe's great rival, was what relation to Frank Pepe?

His nephew: Sally learned the trade from his uncle, and in 1938 his mother, Pepe's sister Filomena, bought a building with a bread oven on the same street for him to run as a pizzeria.

Unlike its Wooster Street rivals, Modern, the third of New Haven's famous pizzerias, opened in 1934 on which street?

State Street put Modern in the East Rock neighborhood, away from Wooster Square, and its ovens differ too: Modern's brick ovens burn oil, where Pepe's and Sally's burn coal.

The Frisbee takes its name from which product's tins, tossed by Yale students?

Pies from Bridgeport's Frisbie bakery came in tins that students at Yale and other colleges flung for sport; Wham-O renamed its Pluto Platter the Frisbee in 1957 after hearing them call a flying disc a 'Frisbie'.

Which construction toy was invented in New Haven by A. C. Gilbert in 1911?

Gilbert's Erector Set, sold from 1913, came to him on a train to New York as he watched workmen rivet steel girders beside the track; he was also a magician and a 1908 Olympic pole-vault gold medalist.

Which US president was born in New Haven while his father was a Yale student?

George W. Bush was born in New Haven on July 6, 1946, while his father was a Yale undergraduate, but he grew up in Midland and Houston and made his political career as a Texan, serving as that state's governor.

Whose 1970 trial drew thousands of protesters to New Haven's Green?

Bobby Seale and other Black Panthers were charged over the 1969 killing of fellow Panther Alex Rackley; Seale's jury deadlocked, and the judge, widely expected to order a retrial, dismissed the charges instead.

Yale political scientist Robert Dahl turned his study of New Haven's politics into which landmark 1961 book?

Who Governs? argued from New Haven's politics that power in American cities is spread among competing groups, a rebuttal of C. Wright Mills and other writers who saw a single small elite in charge.

Which musical had its first public performance, as 'Away We Go!', at New Haven's Shubert Theatre in 1943?

Oklahoma! was still Away We Go! at its New Haven tryout that March, when a Broadway insider famously wrote it off with a quip ending 'no chance'; retitled, it opened on Broadway to raves.

Which Tennessee Williams play opened at New Haven's Shubert in 1947?

A Streetcar Named Desire played the Shubert in 1947 with Jessica Tandy and Marlon Brando, one of hundreds of tryouts that made 'bombed in New Haven' Broadway shorthand for a show that stumbled out of town.

Which New Haven museum was founded on a gift of art from the collector Paul Mellon?

The Yale Center for British Art holds the largest collection of British art outside the United Kingdom; its architect, Louis Kahn, died three years before it opened in 1977.

Which nephew, an early paleontologist, urged George Peabody to found the Peabody Museum in 1866?

Othniel Charles Marsh won his uncle's gift for Yale in 1866, then spent decades in the 'Bone Wars', a bitter rivalry with Edward Drinker Cope in which each raced to dig up and name new dinosaurs before the other.

The bronze Torosaurus outside the Peabody Museum is a close relative of which famous dinosaur?

Triceratops is so close a relative that some paleontologists argued Torosaurus was merely its full-grown form; Yale researchers answered in 2012 that the two are separate dinosaurs.

Grove Street Cemetery's Egyptian Revival gateway carries which inscription?

'The Dead Shall Be Raised', from 1 Corinthians, crowns the gateway Henry Austin designed in 1845; Yale president Arthur Twining Hadley is said to have quipped that they certainly would be, if Yale ever wanted the land.

Which famous Connecticut writer is buried in New Haven's Grove Street Cemetery, among Yale presidents and inventors?

Noah Webster, the dictionary maker, lies in the cemetery New Haven laid out in 1796 after yellow fever epidemics left the old burial ground on the Green too crowded to use.

Wooster Square's annual spring festival celebrates trees of what kind?

Yoshino cherry trees were planted around Wooster Square's park in 1973, and the neighborhood's spring festival grew up to celebrate their bloom, down to the 'pink snow' of falling petals.

Who was David Wooster, the man for whom New Haven's Wooster Square is named?

A Revolutionary War general, David Wooster was badly wounded in 1777 while attacking the rear of a British column that had just burned the army's stores at Danbury, and he died there a few days later.

The cliffs that frame New Haven on east and west are ridges of which hard, dark stone?

Trap rock forms both East Rock and West Rock, left when magma cooled about 200 million years ago; it resists erosion far better than the sandstone around it, so the ridges stayed standing as the softer rock wore away.

What stands on the summit of East Rock, visible for miles?

The Soldiers and Sailors Monument, dedicated in 1887, is a 112-foot column topped by an Angel of Peace honoring New Haveners who died in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War and the Civil War.

Which NFL team played its home games at the Yale Bowl in 1973 and 1974?

The New York Giants needed a stand-in home while Yankee Stadium was rebuilt, and New Haven saw little to cheer: they won just one of the twelve regular-season games they played in the Bowl.

Which standard feature has the Yale Bowl lacked ever since it opened in 1914?

Locker rooms were never built into the Bowl, so Yale's players dress in a field house about 200 yards away and march in past cheering fans while the band plays, a ritual known as the Bulldog Walk.

Which New Havener is known as the 'father of American football'?

Walter Camp, raised in New Haven and a Yale player and coach, devised the line of scrimmage and the system of downs in the 1880s; he is buried in Grove Street Cemetery.

Which band played a surprise warm-up club show at Toad's Place on August 12, 1989?

The Rolling Stones had spent six weeks rehearsing at a vacant girls' school in rural Connecticut, then tried the set on 700 fans who paid about $3 each; it was their first American show in eight years.

Which rock singer was arrested mid-concert on the stage of the New Haven Arena in December 1967?

Jim Morrison of the Doors was hauled off after a run-in with a policeman before the show, and the crowd rioted; the band later worked the night into 'Peace Frog', with its line about blood in the streets of New Haven.

Which architect, famed for a New York skyscraper, designed New Haven's Union Station and public library?

Cass Gilbert, famed for the Woolworth Building, saw his Union Station open in 1920 after fire ruined the old depot; it sat closed in the 1970s until federal rail money paid for the restoration that reopened it in 1985.

Charles Dickens supposedly called which New Haven street 'the most beautiful street in America' in 1868?

Hillhouse Avenue, laid out by James Hillhouse in 1792, is lined with 19th-century mansions mostly owned by Yale; the whole avenue is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Which church on New Haven's Green is the Gothic Revival one, built for an Episcopal parish?

Trinity Church got its Gothic design from Ithiel Town, the same architect who was building the Federal-style Center Church next door; it is among the earliest Gothic Revival churches in America.

Which airline made Tweed New Haven Airport its first East Coast base in 2021?

Avelo Airlines had made its first scheduled flight just eight days before the deal was announced in May 2021, and its arrival came with a plan for a new terminal on the airport's East Haven side.

Which two clothing brands were founded in New Haven?

Gant and Ann Taylor both began in New Haven: shirtmaker Bernard Gantmacher shortened his own name for the label in 1949, while the dress shop that opened in 1954 was named for nobody, as there never was a real Ann Taylor.

Which holiday's New Haven parade dates back to 1842?

St. Patrick's Day: by the organizers' account, the newly formed Hibernian Provident Society marched behind a band to Mass on March 17, 1842, the start of a parade they rank among New England's oldest.

Unhappy at the New Haven Colony's merger with Connecticut, some of its Puritans left to found which New Jersey city?

Newark was founded in 1666 by Puritans from the old New Haven Colony under Robert Treat, who hoped to rebuild the church-run community they had lost when Connecticut absorbed their towns.

Which city passed New Haven at the 2020 census to become Connecticut's second largest?

Stamford counted 135,470 residents to New Haven's 134,023, overtaking both New Haven and Hartford in a single census and leaving New Haven third in the state behind Bridgeport and Stamford.

Which mayor, in office from 1954, made New Haven a national test case for urban renewal?

Richard C. Lee spent eight terms rebuilding New Haven with state and federal money as a 'Model City', but the clearances cost thousands of mostly poor residents their homes; the federal courthouse now bears his name.

The Farmington Canal and its Massachusetts extension linked New Haven with which city on the Connecticut River?

Northampton was reached in 1835, a decade after digging began, but the canal never paid its way; within about a dozen years a railroad was running along its bed, and much of the route is now a walking and cycling trail.

Which hit-making pop duo of the 1970s were both born in New Haven before moving to California as teenagers?

The Carpenters, Karen and her older brother, were born at Grace–New Haven Hospital. The family left for the Los Angeles suburb of Downey in 1963, hoping it would help his music.

Which future White House couple first met in the Yale Law School library in New Haven in 1971?

Bill and Hillary Clinton met as law students, when she was a class year ahead of him. Both left New Haven with their degrees in 1973.

Which 2000s TV drama sent its bookish heroine to New Haven when she picked Yale over her dream school, Harvard?

Gilmore Girls sends Rory to her grandfather's alma mater, though the campus scenes were mostly shot on sound stages in California.

The brick ovens at New Haven's oldest pizzerias, Frank Pepe's among them, are traditionally fired with which fuel?

Coal fires every Pepe's oven, and each new restaurant gets a brick one built as a copy of the Wooster Street original.

Which New Haven bakery, opened by a Polish immigrant in 1927, put frozen bagels into American supermarkets?

Lender's began when Harry Lender bought a bakery on Oak Street for $600. Freezing came later, as a way to cope with the crush of Sunday-morning orders.

In March 1942 a dying woman at New Haven Hospital made a dramatic recovery after doctors gave her which scarce new drug?

Penicillin broke Anne Miller's 106°F fever within 48 hours. The drug was so precious that about three grams were later recovered from her urine.

Metro-North's New Haven Line carries Connecticut commuters from Union Station to which New York City terminal?

Grand Central is the end of the line, yet Metro-North owns the track only as far as the state border. Connecticut's own transportation department owns the rest.

Handsome Dan, bought by a Yale football player in 1889 and adopted as the university's mascot, is which breed of dog?

Bulldog Handsome Dan was a champion in his own right, winning first prize at the Westminster Dog Show and at least thirty other ribbons.

Which New Haven-born TV producer modeled Archie Bunker of All in the Family partly on his own father?

Norman Lear, the son of a traveling salesman, also drew Edith Bunker from life: she was partly inspired by his mother.

Which coconut and dark chocolate bar was launched by Peter Paul, a New Haven firm founded by Armenian immigrants?

Mounds carried Peter Paul through the Depression, when the company doubled the bar into a twin and kept the price at five cents.

A New Haven birth control clinic, whose founders were arrested in 1961, led the Supreme Court to recognize what?

The right to privacy grew out of the case of Estelle Griswold, who opened the clinic to defy a state ban on contraceptives and was fined $100 for it.

Which New Haven city workers won the 2009 Supreme Court case Ricci v. DeStefano after a promotion exam was thrown out?

Firefighters who had passed the test, nineteen white and one Hispanic, sued when the city scrapped the results. The justices sided with them 5–4.

Which former US president argued at the Supreme Court in 1841 for the Amistad captives once jailed in New Haven?

John Quincy Adams, by then a congressman from Massachusetts, felt so ill-prepared when his turn came that another lawyer had to open in his place.

Which American spy, hanged by the British in 1776, has a statue outside the Yale dormitory where he once lived?

Nathan Hale entered Yale at just fourteen, and reportedly carried his diploma, with his real name on it, on the spying mission that cost him his life.

In 1861 Yale awarded the first American examples of which degree, an idea imported from German universities?

The PhD went to three Yale men that year, in philosophy, physics and classics. Bucknell had handed out an honorary one nine years earlier, but these were the first to be earned.

Which long-running newspaper comic strip began as 'Bull Tales' in Yale's student paper in 1968?

Doonesbury owes half its name to Yale too: the 'bury' comes from Charles Pillsbury, the college roommate of its creator, Garry Trudeau.

Yale and Harvard first met in 1852 in America's oldest intercollegiate sporting contest, held in which sport?

Rowing beat football to it by 23 years. The first race was held far from either campus, on New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee.

Which future Oscar winner, fresh from Vassar College, earned a master's degree at the Yale School of Drama in 1975?

Meryl Streep had taken her first drama degree cum laude in 1971. Her Master of Fine Arts from Yale followed four years later.

New Haven's Puritans are said to have sized the town Green to hold the 144,000 souls spared at which event?

The Second Coming of Christ has yet to fill the Green, but graves did: an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 people still lie buried beneath the grass.

Which tennis star won New Haven's Pilot Pen tournament four years running, from 1999 to 2002?

Venus Williams owned the event's early years in New Haven, where it had settled only in 1998 as a tune-up played just before the US Open.

Which New Haven-born inventor of vulcanized rubber had a famous tire company named after him long after his death?

Charles Goodyear died about $200,000 in debt. The tire company was founded in 1898, almost four decades later, by Frank Seiberling, who named it in his honor.

Which New Haven-born cartoonist created the hillbilly comic strip Li'l Abner and drew it for more than four decades?

Al Capp, born Alfred Caplin, came from families that had left Latvia for New Haven in the 1880s. At nine he lost his left leg after being run over by a trolley car.

Which New Haven-born pediatrician wrote Baby and Child Care, one of the 20th century's best-selling books?

Benjamin Spock grew up the son of the New Haven Railroad's longtime lawyer. His 1946 guide sold 500,000 copies in its first six months.

Which New Haven-born lawyer became the first Black woman to argue a case before the US Supreme Court?

Constance Baker Motley, the ninth of twelve children, argued ten landmark civil rights cases there and won nine, among them James Meredith's fight to enter the University of Mississippi.

Which master builder of New York's highways and parkways was born in New Haven, two blocks from the Yale campus?

Robert Moses spent his first nine years on Dwight Street, where his father was a successful department store owner and real estate speculator.

Which Yale secret society, founded in 1832, meets in a New Haven hall on High Street known as the Tomb?

Skull and Bones grew out of a quarrel among Yale's debating societies over that season's Phi Beta Kappa awards. It still takes just fifteen juniors a year.

Yale's Beinecke rare book library admits daylight through thin, translucent wall panels of which stone?

Marble from Danby, Vermont, was milled just an inch and a quarter thick, so that filtered daylight fills the interior with a golden amber glow.

Yale's Ingalls Rink, a 1950s hockey arena designed by Eero Saarinen, is nicknamed for its resemblance to which animal?

A whale is what the humped building suggests to most people. It cost $1.5 million to build, double the original estimate.

Which interstate begins at I-95 in New Haven and runs north through Hartford to the Canadian border in Vermont?

I-91 ends at Derby Line, Vermont, where the road simply carries on into Quebec as Autoroute 55.

New Haven's 1914 football stadium, America's first of its shape, inspired the design and name of which California venue?

The Rose Bowl in turn gave its name to college football's post-season bowl games, and through them to the NFL's Super Bowl.

Which giant dinosaur, for decades dismissed as a mislabeled Apatosaurus, was mounted at Yale's Peabody Museum in 1931?

Brontosaurus won its name back in 2015, when a study found it distinct from its close relative after all. Some paleontologists remain unconvinced.

Which former US president moved to New Haven in 1913 to teach law at Yale, weeks after leaving the White House?

William Howard Taft arrived to a rapturous reception as Yale's Kent Professor of Law. Eight years later he was Chief Justice, the only person to have held both offices.

Frenchman Pierre Lallement, honored by a memorial on New Haven's Green, filed the earliest US patent for which machine?

The bicycle patent of 1866, for a model driven by pedals, was bankrolled by James Carroll of New Haven. Lallement had built his machine after settling in nearby Ansonia.

New Haven native Paul Sperry designed which footwear after watching his dog run down an icy hill without slipping?

The boat shoe borrows from a cocker spaniel's paw: Sperry cut similar fine grooves into a rubber sole to give boaters the same sure grip.

Which painter of the American Revolution founded Yale's art gallery in 1832 by donating more than 100 of his works?

John Trumbull designed the original picture gallery himself, giving Yale what is now the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere.

Yale's Gothic Harkness Tower, a landmark of the New Haven skyline, houses which instrument played by a student guild?

A carillon hangs behind the clock faces, and the stone tower had to be reinforced with steel in 1966 to carry its new bells.

Which international sporting event held its 1995 opening and closing ceremonies at Yale's football stadium in New Haven?

The Special Olympics World Summer Games ran for nine days that July, with some events spilling over into neighboring West Haven.

Which sportswear brand, founded in New Haven to outfit high school teams, made pro team jackets a 1990s status symbol?

Starter was founded by David Beckerman, a University of New Haven alumnus. Its first retail product was a line of jackets bearing Major League Baseball insignias.

Which architect's first significant commission was the modernist Yale University Art Gallery, finished in 1953?

Louis Kahn was teaching architecture at Yale at the time, and the commission is credited with transforming his career.

On a classic 'plain' New Haven pizza, which familiar ingredient counts as an optional extra topping?

Mozzarella has to be asked for. A plain pie is just crust, tomato sauce, oregano and a little grated pecorino romano.

Which Yale undergraduate won the 1981 design competition for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at the age of 21?

Maya Lin's design was picked from more than 1,400 entries: a V-shaped wall of black granite, a minimalist break from the war memorials that had come before.

Which Yale freshman did John Hinckley Jr. move to New Haven to stalk before he shot President Reagan in 1981?

Jodie Foster had become his obsession through repeat viewings of Taxi Driver. He tried to reach her by letter and telephone, and her taped testimony was later played at his trial.

Which hard rock band filmed its 1986 concert video Live Without a Net at the New Haven Coliseum?

Van Halen shot it on the 5150 Tour, the band's first with Sammy Hagar as lead singer, and it became their first video release.

Which playwright's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom opened at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 1984 before moving to Broadway?

August Wilson found his champion in New Haven: Lloyd Richards, who ran the Yale Rep from 1979 to 1991, is credited with nurturing his career.

Which Yale president of the early 1980s went on to become commissioner of Major League Baseball in 1989?

Bart Giamatti lasted only five months in baseball's top job, dying suddenly of a heart attack eight days after he banished Pete Rose from the game.

Which state senator won New Haven's 1989 mayoral race to become the city's first African-American mayor?

John Daniels won a hotly contested Democratic primary against the outgoing mayor's chosen successor, which in New Haven all but settled the election.

Which future Mets pitcher threw 11 no-hit innings for Yale in a 1981 NCAA playoff game, only to lose 1–0?

Ron Darling lost it in the 12th to St. John's and Frank Viola, later his Mets teammate. Some call it the best game in college baseball history.

Which kind of storm flattened an industrial park in neighboring Hamden in July 1989, stopping just short of New Haven?

A tornado cut a path only five miles long, yet it damaged or destroyed almost 400 structures and tossed cranes and cars through the air.

Which New Haven-born singer fronted the hard rock band Blackjack before late-1980s ballads made him a pop star?

Michael Bolton, born Michael Bolotin, once opened for Ozzy Osbourne with that band. His first big hit came as a writer, with a ballad he co-wrote for Laura Branigan in 1983.

Which hockey team called the New Haven Coliseum home through the 1980s as a farm club of the Rangers and Kings?

The Nighthawks played the arena's very first event, a 1972 exhibition game, and lasted twenty years before being renamed the Senators.