50 Fun Facts About Rose Parade

An early Tournament of Roses staged a novelty race in Pasadena in which an elephant beat which other animal?

A camel lost to the elephant on the town lot later named Tournament Park, where ostrich races and bronco busting also drew crowds.

The Rose Parade shifts to January 2 whenever New Year's Day falls on which day of the week?

Sunday parades were ruled out in 1893 so the noise would not spook horses hitched outside churches during services.

Under Rose Parade rules, every exposed inch of a float must be covered in which kind of decoration?

Natural materials are the only covering allowed: petals, seeds, bark, leaves, even seaweed and nuts, and none of it may be dyed.

Which cartoon character was grand marshal of the 2005 Rose Parade, decades after his creator held the role in 1966?

Mickey Mouse led the 2005 parade 39 years after Walt Disney did, and Walt's nephew Roy E. Disney took the same job in 2000.

Which child film star became the youngest grand marshal in Rose Parade history at the 1939 parade?

Shirley Temple presided over the 50th anniversary parade and returned as grand marshal twice more, in 1989 and 1999.

After a 49–0 rout in the first Tournament of Roses football game, organizers replaced football with which event?

Chariot racing, inspired by the novel Ben-Hur, filled the afternoon slot until football returned for good in 1916.

Which 2007 DreamWorks animated film has its insect hero steal a Rose Parade float to save the planet's flowers?

Bee Movie sends Barry and Vanessa to Pasadena to take a float from the last Tournament of Roses, whose blooms the bees then use to restart pollination.

The Tournament of Roses is headquartered in a Pasadena mansion once owned by which Chicago business magnate?

William Wrigley Jr., the chewing gum magnate, bought the house in 1914, and his family gave it to Pasadena in 1958 as the tournament's permanent base.

Before the pandemic cancellation of 2021, the Rose Parade had been called off only during which war?

World War II halted the parade in 1942, 1943 and 1945, and nothing stopped it again for 76 years.

Most Rose Parade float drivers sit hidden beneath the flowers, able to see only what as they steer?

The ground below them is all most drivers can see, so an observer hidden elsewhere in the float gives directions over an intercom.

Which carmaker became the Rose Parade's presenting sponsor in 2011, a deal that gave it the first float?

Honda also supplies the fleet of white cars, fitted with special tournament licence plates, that appears around Pasadena each December.

Most of the Rose Parade's 5.5-mile route follows which Pasadena street, once a stretch of Route 66?

Colorado Boulevard is Pasadena's main thoroughfare, and the parade turns onto it from Orange Grove Boulevard, where the floats form up.

Since the mid-1990s, which US Air Force aircraft has traditionally opened the Rose Parade with a flyover?

A B-2 stealth bomber, the Northrop B-2 Spirit, has signalled the start nearly every year, though rain cancelled the flyover in 2006.

At what Pacific time does the Rose Parade traditionally step off from Orange Grove Boulevard on New Year's morning?

8 a.m. is the traditional start, and at a walking pace of about 2.5 miles an hour the procession takes more than two hours to pass.

The 1954 Rose Parade made television history as the first program aired coast to coast in what format?

Full color pictures of the floats went out nationwide on NBC, the first national use of the new NTSC system.

Tournament of Roses volunteers who run the Rose Parade take their nickname from which outfit worn on parade day?

White suits with red ties make the volunteer members easy to spot, which is why they are known as White Suiters.

At the 2015 Rose Parade, a riderless horse stood in for which late Olympian, the subject of the film Unbroken?

Louis Zamperini had been named grand marshal but died six months before the parade, so the USC mascot Traveler walked the route without a rider.

Which baseball slugger led the 1975 Rose Parade as grand marshal months after breaking Babe Ruth's home run record?

Hank Aaron had hit his 715th home run the previous April, and he followed golfer Arnold Palmer, who led the 1965 parade, among sporting grand marshals.

The Tournament of Roses added a college football game on New Year's Day 1902 chiefly for which reason?

To help pay for the parade was the whole idea, and the game grew into the Rose Bowl, the first postseason game college football ever had.

Which host of The Newlywed Game co-anchored Rose Parade telecasts for a Los Angeles station until 2016?

Bob Eubanks spent decades in KTLA's booth beside Stephanie Edwards, and the pair signed off together after the 2016 parade.

Which private Pasadena society staged the first Rose Parade in 1890 to show off California's mild winter weather?

Valley Hunt Club members were mostly transplants from the East and Midwest, and by 1895 the event had outgrown them and passed to a new association.

Charles F. Holder pitched the first Rose Parade by saying people in which place were buried in snow?

New York was his example of a snowbound winter, set against Pasadena's blooming flowers and ripening oranges.

Which Midwestern university won the first Tournament of Roses football game in 1902 by a score of 49–0?

Michigan, a team nicknamed Point-a-Minute, was so far ahead of Stanford that the losing captain asked to stop with eight minutes left.

Tournament Park, the Pasadena lot that hosted early Tournament of Roses games, is now maintained by which university?

Caltech now uses the old stadium site for track and field, and the first eight Rose Bowl games were played there before the Rose Bowl stadium took over in 1923.

Tall Rose Parade floats must fold down partway along the route to clear which obstacle on Sierra Madre Boulevard?

A freeway overpass carrying Interstate 210 crosses the route, so floats are built to collapse to about 16.5 feet.

Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade floats are towed by trucks, but how do Rose Parade floats usually travel the route?

On their own engines, since each float is self-propelled and built on a used truck chassis instead of a trailer.

The Rose Parade's top float award, given to the most beautiful entry, carries which name?

Sweepstakes is the top prize among two dozen float awards, all decided by a panel of three judges.

Universities in Pomona and San Luis Obispo have jointly built a Rose Parade float since 1949 under which shared name?

Cal Poly students brought hydraulic animation to the parade in 1968, and their 2026 entry was the first self-built float to win the top prize.

Which silent film star, a co-founder of United Artists, became the Rose Parade's first female grand marshal in 1933?

Mary Pickford led the 1933 parade, and it took until 2009 for the tenth woman, Cloris Leachman, to hold the post.

The seven grand marshals who shared the 1952 Rose Parade had all received which American military decoration?

Medal of Honor recipients filled the role that year, the most grand marshals any single parade has had.

Which comedian, famed for entertaining American troops overseas, was Rose Parade grand marshal in both 1947 and 1969?

Bob Hope is one of a handful of repeat grand marshals, a list headed by early organizer Francis Rowland, who led seven parades.

Which California-born future US president served as Rose Parade grand marshal in both 1953 and 1960?

Richard Nixon first led the parade as vice president-elect, and Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford and Herbert Hoover each took a turn after leaving office.

The three grand marshals of the 1970 Rose Parade had just flown which NASA Moon mission?

Apollo 12 astronauts Bean, Conrad and Gordon shared the role, and John Glenn and Buzz Aldrin later led parades too.

Which cartoonist, grand marshal of the 1974 Rose Parade, drew a strip joking that nobody had heard of the grand marshal?

Charles Schulz had Lucy tell Linus the grand marshal was nobody he had heard of, and the original Peanuts panel is displayed at Tournament House.

Which children's TV host delayed cancer treatment so he could share grand marshal duties at the 2003 Rose Parade?

Fred Rogers shared the role with Art Linkletter and Bill Cosby, and he died less than two months after the parade.

Which primatologist, known for decades of fieldwork in Africa, was grand marshal of the 2013 Rose Parade?

Jane Goodall led a parade that borrowed its title from Dr. Seuss's last book, Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Which actress, later a star of One Tree Hill, reigned as the Rose Parade's Rose Queen in 2000?

Sophia Bush was still a Pasadena student when she wore the crown, years before her television fame.

Hallie Woods, the Rose Parade's first Rose Queen in 1905, was chosen for the role by which group?

Her high school classmates at Pasadena High picked her, and she sewed her own gown and helped decorate the float she rode.

Each year's Tournament of Roses president chooses the Rose Parade's grand marshal and which other element?

The theme is announced each January, and most floats are then designed around it over the following year.

Which organization's band has marched in the Rose Parade more often than any other, passing 100 appearances?

The Salvation Army band made its 103rd appearance in 2023, drawing on local and visiting musicians.

Which trick roper rode in more than 60 Rose Parades and once lassoed President Eisenhower at his inauguration?

Montie Montana waved to crowds from a silver saddle nearly every New Year until his death in 1998.

Which Saturday Night Live alumnus fronted a spoof Rose Parade broadcast in 2018 as fictional anchor Cord Hosenbeck?

Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon played veteran local anchors Cord Hosenbeck and Tish Cattigan for Funny or Die, earning a Writers Guild nomination.

Which major sports prize rode on the City of Anaheim's float at the 2008 Rose Parade after a local team's title?

The Stanley Cup, won by the Anaheim Ducks in 2007, was hoisted aboard by player Brad May despite the rule that float exteriors be organic.

The 113-foot float that set a Guinness length record at the 2010 Rose Parade promoted which kind of product?

Pet food was the product, from a brand fronted by actor Dick Van Patten, and the float set the mark for the longest built on a single chassis.

Pasadena's farcical Doo Dah Parade, a spoof of the Rose Parade launched in 1978, was dreamed up in what kind of venue?

A pub called the Loch Ness Monster was where a group of friends hatched the idea, as an irreverent answer to the formal parade.

Orange Grove Boulevard, where Rose Parade floats line up outside Tournament House, once carried which nickname?

Millionaires' Row was lined with the mansions of Midwestern magnates, most since replaced by apartments and condominiums.

Charles F. Holder, who pitched the first Rose Parade, was a professor and author in which branch of science?

Zoology was his field, and he is also remembered as a pioneer of big-game fishing who founded an angling society on Catalina Island.

When automobiles first joined the Rose Parade, where were they placed so they would not scare the horses?

At the very back was the only place the Tournament allowed early motor cars, so their noise would not startle the horses pulling the flower-covered carriages ahead.

The 1942 Rose Bowl Game was moved across the country and played on which university's campus?

Duke, one of the two teams in the game, offered its North Carolina stadium because of security fears on the West Coast.

Which veteran Los Angeles sportscaster was grand marshal of the 2014 Rose Parade?

Vin Scully, the longtime voice of the Dodgers, led the parade and the Rose Bowl Game that followed, where the grand marshal traditionally tosses the coin.