125 Fun Facts About Seattle

Seattle is named after a chief of which two Native American peoples?

Chief Seattle led the Duwamish and Suquamish peoples, signed the 1855 Treaty of Point Elliott and opposed the attacks on settlers that followed; he died on the Suquamish reservation in 1866.

Where did the Denny Party land on November 13, 1851?

Alki Point did not hold the Denny Party long: by the following April most of them had moved across the bay to a better-protected harbour, the start of today's downtown.

What did a party of Seattle businessmen take from a village in Alaska in 1899 and raise in Pioneer Square?

A totem pole taken from a Tlingit village by a Chamber of Commerce party of prominent citizens was unveiled to cheering crowds in October 1899; a successor pole stands on the spot today.

Which pioneer persuaded his fellow settlers to name their village after his friend Chief Seattle?

Doc Maynard, who had just moved his general store to the village, championed his friend's name among the settlers, and the town plats filed in May 1853 made it official.

The Chinook word "alki" in New York Alki means roughly what?

Alki is Chinook Jargon for by and by or someday, so New York Alki meant New York eventually, Charles Terry's hopeful name for the landing-site settlement.

Which European explorer was the first to visit the Seattle area, in May 1792?

George Vancouver sailed HMS Discovery into these waters in May 1792 and named Mount Rainier after a friend, Rear Admiral Peter Rainier.

Puget Sound is named after whom?

A Royal Navy lieutenant, Peter Puget, explored the sound's southern reaches by boat in 1792, and his captain named those waters for him; the name later spread to the whole inlet.

Which nickname replaced "Queen City" as Seattle's epithet in the early 1980s?

The Emerald City won a contest held in 1981 to find a slogan for selling Seattle to tourists; it was no one person's brainwave, since several entrants sent in the same name.

Which Seattle street is the supposed origin of the term "Skid Row"?

Yesler Way began as the skid road down which logs slid to Henry Yesler's waterfront sawmill; the rough district that grew up beside it is said to have given skid row its meaning.

What accidentally started the Great Seattle Fire of 1889?

An overheated glue pot in a carpentry shop boiled over on June 6, 1889; a worker threw water on the burning glue, which only spread it, and by nightfall the business district was gone.

Why does the Seattle Underground exist beneath Pioneer Square?

Streets were raised after the 1889 fire to cure sewers that backed up at high tide; the old ground floors were left below, and for a time pedestrians climbed ladders between the two levels.

Which ship docked in Seattle in July 1897 with its famed "ton of gold"?

S.S. Portland tied up in July 1897 with more than a ton of Klondike gold aboard, and Seattle quickly made itself the outfitting and supply point for the rush that followed.

Which 1909 fair largely shaped the layout of the University of Washington campus?

The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition was laid out on the University of Washington's largely forested grounds, and its Rainier Vista axis, aimed at the mountain, became the spine of the campus.

Which delivery giant was founded in Seattle in 1907 with a $100 loan?

UPS began in 1907 as a messenger service that two teenagers ran from a Seattle basement, delivering on foot and by bicycle; it took the United Parcel Service name in 1919.

What early labour milestone did Seattle see in 1919?

A general strike stopped Seattle for five days in February 1919, when some 65,000 workers walked out in support of striking shipyard unions; the feared revolution never came and the city stayed calm.

In 1926 Seattle's Bertha Knight Landes became the first woman to hold which office in a major American city?

Mayor Bertha Knight Landes won office in 1926 by beating the incumbent on a promise to clean up city government; she lost her bid for a second term two years later.

Which 1962 world's fair gave Seattle the Space Needle and the Monorail?

The Century 21 Exposition drew close to 10 million visitors in six months of 1962 and left its grounds to the city as Seattle Center, its science pavilion reborn as Pacific Science Center.

What did a famous early-1970s billboard ask the last person leaving Seattle to do?

Turn out the lights, asked the billboard two estate agents put up as a joke in April 1971, during the Boeing Bust, when the company had shed more than half its workforce.

To which city did Boeing move its corporate headquarters from Seattle in 2001?

Chicago was picked in May 2001 because, Boeing said, it was central to its customers yet separate from its existing operations; the head office moved again in 2022, to Arlington, Virginia.

What business had made William Boeing wealthy before he turned to building aircraft in Seattle?

Timber made William Boeing rich: he left Yale to buy forest land around Grays Harbor, and only later, unimpressed by a seaplane he had bought, decided he could build a better one.

Where is Boeing's wide-body aircraft plant in the Seattle area?

Everett's plant was built in the late 1960s to assemble the new 747, and the result is the largest building in the world by volume.

The first Starbucks opened in 1971 just outside which Seattle location, moving inside in 1976?

Pike Place Market had the first Starbucks on its doorstep at 2000 Western Avenue; the shop sold only roasted coffee beans, not drinks, and moved into the market itself in 1976.

From which city did Microsoft move to the Seattle suburbs in 1979?

Albuquerque, New Mexico, was home to MITS, maker of the Altair 8800 and the first customer for the founders' software; in 1979 the two Lakeside School friends brought the firm home to the Seattle area.

In which Seattle suburb did Jeff Bezos found Amazon in 1994?

Bellevue was where Jeff Bezos started Amazon in 1994, in the garage of a rented house; within months it moved to an industrial corner of Seattle, and the bookshop opened online in July 1995.

Amazon's move to which neighbourhood set off a historic construction boom?

South Lake Union became Amazon's campus when the company left its old headquarters on Beacon Hill, and its hiring drew a wave of office and apartment towers to a district of old workshops and warehouses.

Where is Costco's worldwide headquarters?

Costco moved its headquarters to Issaquah in 1996; its Kirkland Signature label keeps the name of its previous home, another Eastside suburb.

What did Nordstrom sell exclusively when it opened in 1901?

Shoes were all Wallin & Nordstrom sold from 1901 until 1963; John Nordstrom had paid for the shop with the proceeds of a gold claim he staked in the Klondike.

How was the Seattle outdoor retailer REI set up in 1938?

As a consumers' co-operative: climber Lloyd Anderson had ordered an ice axe direct from Austria, and the co-op he and his wife Mary then founded helped fellow climbers get good gear at fair prices.

Which airline is headquartered in the city of SeaTac?

Alaska Airlines, despite its name, is run from SeaTac in Washington state; it grew out of a 1932 charter service that flew a single three-seat plane out of Anchorage.

The city of SeaTac took its name from what?

The airport's nickname, Sea-Tac, became the new city's name in 1990; it had survived a 1983 vote to rename the airport after Senator Henry Jackson, reversed when Tacoma objected.

Whose 1999 conference in Seattle drew the mass protests known as the Battle of Seattle?

The World Trade Organization's ministers were due to open their meeting on November 30, 1999, but tens of thousands of demonstrators blocked the streets and the opening ceremony was cancelled.

What name is given to the 2001 earthquake that cracked Pioneer Square's old brick buildings?

The Nisqually earthquake, magnitude 6.8, struck on February 28, 2001, centred near the river delta of that name; the damage it did to the Alaskan Way Viaduct led to the elevated road's closure in 2019.

What was Bertha, commissioned for the Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement?

The world's largest tunnel boring machine when built, 57.5 feet across, Bertha broke down in December 2013 about 1,000 feet into its dig and sat for two years; the tunnel opened in 2019.

Which Seattle neighbourhood hosted a self-declared autonomous zone in 2020?

Capitol Hill's zone, known as CHAZ and later CHOP, formed in June 2020 when police withdrew from their East Precinct station; protesters held the surrounding blocks for about three weeks.

In 2023 Seattle became the first US city to ban discrimination based on what?

Caste joined the grounds covered by Seattle's anti-discrimination law on a 6-1 council vote in February 2023; supporters said the bias had followed South Asian workers into housing, schools and tech jobs.

Seattle sits on an isthmus between Puget Sound and which body of water?

Lake Washington hems the city in on the east; so fouled by sewage in the 1950s that voters created a regional agency, Metro, to divert it, the lake had recovered by the mid-1970s.

What is the name of Seattle's chief harbour?

Elliott Bay became Seattle's harbour in 1852, when settlers who had wintered on the far shore took soundings along its eastern shore, judged it the better anchorage and moved their claims there.

Which Canadian province lies about 100 miles north of Seattle?

British Columbia begins at the Peace Arch, a monument that straddles the border at Blaine, Washington; its iron gates have been held permanently open since it was dedicated in 1921.

Seattle's boosters have long claimed the city was built on how many hills?

Seven hills was a boast borrowed from Rome around 1900; the number is arbitrary for so lumpy a city, and nobody has ever agreed on which seven were meant.

Which of Seattle's traditional hills was flattened in the regrades?

Denny Hill was removed in stages between 1897 and 1930, so that business could spread north from downtown onto the level ground now called Belltown.

Which is the only Seattle street to run unbroken from the downtown waterfront to the big lake on the city's eastern edge?

Madison Street owes its reach to Judge John McGilvra, who had a wagon road cut through the forest in the 1860s to reach his lakeside land, now the Madison Park neighbourhood.

Seattle's highest ground, in the High Point neighbourhood, lies in which part of the city?

West Seattle holds the top of the city: the reservoir on the summit was covered over and a park opened on its lid in 2010, beside the two big towers that mark the spot.

About two-fifths of Seattle's total area is what?

Water accounts for about 58 of the 142 square miles inside Seattle's limits, because the boundary runs out into Puget Sound and the lakes; that leaves about 84 square miles of land.

Glacier-clad Mount Rainier, near Seattle, mainly threatens the towns below it with which hazard?

Volcanic mudflows, or lahars, are the volcano's greatest hazard: thousands of years ago one ran all the way to Puget Sound, and towns such as Auburn, Sumner and Enumclaw now stand on what it left behind.

Which range to the west puts Seattle partly in a rain shadow?

The Olympics catch Pacific storms first: the Hoh Rainforest on their windward side gets about 140 inches of rain a year, while Sequim, in their lee, gets about 16.

Which of these cities gets more rain in a year than famously damp Seattle?

Houston gets about 50 inches of rain a year to Seattle's 39; Seattle's reputation rests on light drizzle spread over some 150 wet days, not on heavy downpours.

Seattle's long dry season places it in which Köppen climate category?

Warm-summer Mediterranean (Csb) is Seattle's Köppen label because its summers are so dry: July averages about 0.6 inches of rain, a tenth of what the wettest winter months bring.

What nickname is given to the atmospheric rivers that soak Seattle with heavy winter rain?

The Pineapple Express is named for the waters around Hawaii where its moisture gathers: its warm rain can melt mountain snow as it falls, which adds to the risk of floods.

Which 1962 windstorm set the benchmark for Pacific Northwest gales?

The Columbus Day Storm grew from the remains of a Pacific typhoon, Freda, that regained strength off California; its gusts topped 100 mph as it tore north on October 12, 1962, killing dozens of people.

Which band's 1964 stay at Seattle's Edgewater Hotel was so famous that the room's carpet was sold off in pieces?

The Beatles stayed at the pier-built hotel at the height of Beatlemania; a Seattle department store then bought the carpet from their room, cut it into memento-sized pieces and sold them to queues of fans.

Seattle is the seat of which Washington county?

King County, Washington's most populous county, has Seattle as its seat; it was formally rededicated in 2005 to honour Martin Luther King Jr. rather than Vice President William Rufus King.

A bronze statue of which communist leader, salvaged from Slovakia, has stood on a Seattle street corner since 1995?

Vladimir Lenin's statue was salvaged after communism fell by an American who was teaching in Slovakia; he died soon after shipping it home, and it has stood in the Fremont district ever since, waiting for a buyer.

How tall is the Space Needle?

At 605 feet, the Space Needle rests on a foundation 30 feet deep and 120 feet across, which 467 cement trucks filled in a single day of continuous pouring.

Seattle-born Minoru Yamasaki, architect of the arched science pavilion at the 1962 fair, later designed which Manhattan landmark?

The World Trade Center had narrow windows because Yamasaki, its architect, feared heights; he died in 1986 and so never saw the twin towers destroyed.

What did the Space Needle's 2018 renovation add 500 feet up, billed as a world first?

A revolving glass floor, named The Loupe, opened in August 2018 as the centrepiece of a $100 million renovation, letting visitors look straight down at the ground and at the tower's own workings.

Which monorail was the first in the United States to run daily, three years before Seattle's opened?

Disneyland's monorail opened in June 1959 as a ride that simply looped the park and came back; Seattle's line used the same Alweg technology to carry fairgoers out from downtown.

What did farmers sell from when Seattle's public market opened in 1907?

Wagons were the first stalls: a handful of farmers drove in on opening day, sold out to the crowds and so bypassed the wholesale middlemen they accused of cheating them.

What are fishmongers at Seattle's famous public market known for doing with the fish?

Throw them to each other they do, a habit that began as a shortcut: tossing a customer's fish to the clerk at the scales saved a walk around the counter.

Where is the Gum Wall?

The Gum Wall lines Post Alley beneath the market: in the 1990s people queuing for improv shows at the Market Theater began sticking gum to the bricks, and in November 2015 it was steam-cleaned bare for the first time in 20 years.

What is the Fremont Troll clutching?

A Volkswagen Beetle, a real car that once wore red paint and a California licence plate, is crushed in the troll's left hand, as if just snatched from the roadway above.

Beneath which span does the Fremont Troll lurk?

The troll sits under the north end of the Aurora Bridge at North 36th Street, sculpted in 1990 after a Fremont Arts Council competition to reclaim the space under the span.

Which building was the tallest on the US West Coast for nearly half a century until 1962?

Smith Tower opened in 1914 for typewriter magnate L.C. Smith, who died in 1910 and left his son to see it built; it was the tallest building west of the Mississippi until 1931.

What is the tallest building in Washington state?

Columbia Center opened in 1985 with 76 storeys after developer Martin Selig won extra height by adding shops and public areas that earned bonuses under the building code; its observatory is on the 73rd floor.

Which architect designed the 2004 Seattle Central Library?

Rem Koolhaas and his firm OMA, with Seattle's LMN Architects, built the library around a Books Spiral, a ramp that keeps the nonfiction shelves in one unbroken Dewey Decimal run instead of splitting them between floors.

Who founded the Museum of Pop Culture, originally the Experience Music Project?

Paul Allen, Microsoft's co-founder and a guitarist since high school, opened the Experience Music Project in June 2000 to put his rock memorabilia on show; it became the Museum of Pop Culture in 2016.

Which architect designed Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture?

Frank O. Gehry designed the 140,000-square-foot museum, opened in 2000 beside the Monorail at Seattle Center, its swooping sheet-metal skin said to evoke smashed guitars.

Which Seattle attraction opened on Pier 57 in 2012?

The Seattle Great Wheel opened at the end of Pier 57 in June 2012; pier owner Hal Griffith had wanted a Ferris wheel on the waterfront since the 1980s.

What did the 1916 ship canal do to Seattle's biggest lake?

Dropped it nine feet: the lake drained down to the level of Lake Union, and its old outlet, the Black River, ran dry as the canal became the new way out.

The Ballard Locks are officially named after whom?

The locks are officially the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, after the Army Corps of Engineers district commander who championed the ship canal; they opened on July 4, 1917, and Carl S. English Jr. later laid out the gardens beside them.

Which sculpture stands in front of the Seattle Art Museum?

Hammering Man, Jonathan Borofsky's 48-foot kinetic steel figure, swings its arm outside the Seattle Art Museum; on Labor Day 1993 local artists shackled a ball and chain to its leg as a comment on working life.

What nickname does the neighbourhood around Harborview, Virginia Mason and Swedish carry?

Pill Hill is the nickname First Hill earned from its cluster of hospitals; in the 1890s it was the retreat of Seattle's wealthy families, a hill of mansions and high society.

Thanks to its Medic One paramedics, 60 Minutes in 1974 called Seattle the best place to have what?

A heart attack: Medic One, started in 1970 by cardiologist Leonard Cobb and fire chief Gordon Vickery, trained firefighters to treat cardiac arrest on the spot instead of simply racing victims to hospital.

Washington State Ferries sail from Seattle's Colman Dock to Bremerton and which island?

Bainbridge Island and Bremerton are the two car-ferry runs from Colman Dock; the state took the boats over in 1951, buying out the private Black Ball Line after a long fight over fare rises.

What is unusual about the light-rail line that links Seattle to the Eastside?

It crosses a floating bridge, the first light rail anywhere to do so: the pontoons move with the lake, so engineers designed special track bridges to carry the rails between the floating deck and fixed ground.

Which museum on the University of Washington campus opened in 1927 as the state's first public art museum?

The Henry Art Gallery opened in February 1927 after collector Horace C. Henry gave the university his paintings and the money for a building to hang them in.

Which Seattle attraction grew out of mill owner Guy Phinney's private estate, bought by the city in 1899?

Woodland Park Zoo began as the small menagerie on Guy Phinney's estate; the city bought the grounds from his widow in 1899, and his name lives on in the Phinney Ridge neighbourhood beside it.

Which Seattle thoroughfare's jazz clubs nurtured the teenage Quincy Jones in the 1940s?

Jackson Street, running from the International District into the Central District, was lined with jazz clubs through the 1940s and also helped launch Ray Charles and Ernestine Anderson.

Which Seattle independent label signed Nirvana, Soundgarden and Mudhoney?

Sub Pop, the label Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman built out of Pavitt's fanzine, released Nirvana's debut Bleach in 1989 and is credited with popularising grunge.

In which Washington town was Nirvana formed in 1987?

Aberdeen, on Grays Harbor, is where Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic formed Nirvana in 1987; they ran through a string of drummers before Dave Grohl joined in 1990.

Which grunge band, formed in Seattle in 1990, is fronted by Eddie Vedder?

Pearl Jam formed in 1990 from the ashes of Mother Love Bone, with Eddie Vedder recruited from San Diego; its debut album Ten came out in 1991.

Which guitar legend grew up in Seattle strumming a broom before he owned a guitar?

Jimi Hendrix strummed a broom at the foot of his bed as a boy; in 1958, at about 15, he got his first acoustic guitar, bought second-hand with $5 from his father.

Which martial-arts film star opened his first kung fu school in Seattle?

Bruce Lee moved to Seattle in 1959 and taught kung fu while a student at the University of Washington; he is buried in the city's Lake View Cemetery, with Steve McQueen and James Coburn among his pallbearers.

Which Seattle festival takes over Seattle Center every Labor Day weekend?

Bumbershoot, named for an old slang word for umbrella, began in 1971 as Festival '71, a city-funded bid to lift spirits during the Boeing slump, and later settled on Labor Day weekend.

Which Seattle summer festival features hydroplane races and a Blue Angels air show?

Seafair began in 1950 as a party for the city's coming centennial; hydroplane racing joined a year later and quickly became the festival's signature event.

Which sitcom followed a psychiatrist who returned to his hometown of Seattle as a radio host?

Frasier ran for eleven seasons from 1993, following Dr. Frasier Crane home from the Cheers bar in Boston; despite the setting, only one episode, The 1000th Show, was actually filmed in Seattle.

What was the call sign of the Seattle radio station where TV psychiatrist Dr. Crane hosted his show?

KACL takes its fictional call letters from the initials of the show's creators, David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee; Dr. Crane's producer Roz Doyle ran the booth.

Who directed the 1993 film Sleepless in Seattle?

Nora Ephron directed and co-wrote Sleepless in Seattle, in which Tom Hanks's widowed architect lives on a houseboat and his young son phones a radio show to find him a new wife.

What was Grey's Anatomy's fictional workplace originally called?

Seattle Grace Hospital merged with a rival to become Seattle Grace Mercy West, then was renamed Grey Sloan Memorial in memory of Lexie Grey and Mark Sloan, who died after a plane crash.

What is the "Seattle Freeze"?

The Seattle Freeze is the difficulty newcomers have making friends with polite but distant locals; the name was in print by 2005, and one theory blames the reserve of the city's Nordic and Asian settlers.

Which Japanese-derived fast-food meal is a Seattle-area speciality?

Seattle teriyaki, grilled chicken in a sweet soy glaze over rice, took off after Toshi Kasahara opened Toshi's Teriyaki, the city's first shop devoted to it, in 1976.

Which seafood chain was founded by a folk singer who opened Seattle's first aquarium?

Ivar Haglund, a folk singer, opened Seattle's first aquarium on Pier 54 in 1938 with a fish-and-chips stand beside it, the seed of the Ivar's chain and its Acres of Clams restaurant.

Which Seattle station grew from a University of Washington student station into a pioneer of internet radio?

KEXP began in 1972 as KCMU, a 10-watt station run by University of Washington students; by 2000 it was streaming high-quality audio around the clock, and it took its new call letters in 2001.

Which composer is Seattle Opera particularly known for staging?

Richard Wagner made Seattle Opera's name: from 1975 it staged his Ring cycle every summer into the 1980s, one week in German and the next in English, and it later built two new productions of the epic.

Which downtown Seattle theatre, opened in 1926 with a Chinese-inspired interior, tries out new musicals bound for Broadway?

The 5th Avenue Theatre, modelled on Beijing's Forbidden City, was saved by a business-led restoration in 1980; Hairspray premiered there in 2002 and went straight to Broadway.

What is Seattle's Real Change?

Real Change is a street newspaper sold mainly by homeless people and other low-income vendors, who buy each copy and resell it at a profit; founded in 1994, it went weekly in 2005.

Which team was the first American club to win the Stanley Cup?

The Seattle Metropolitans of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association beat the Montreal Canadiens in 1917, the first US team to win the Stanley Cup; the club folded in 1924.

What happened to baseball's Seattle Pilots after one season?

They moved to Milwaukee and became the Brewers in 1970 after the Pilots' owners went bankrupt; local governments sued the American League, and the settlement brought the Mariners.

Which Mariner was both Rookie of the Year and MVP in 2001?

Ichiro Suzuki had already won seven straight batting titles in Japan when he joined Seattle, and in 2001 he led the league in hits, steals and batting average as the team matched the 1906 Cubs' 116 wins.

Which Seattle stadium, home to the Mariners and Seahawks, was imploded in 2000?

The Kingdome came down by implosion on March 26, 2000, while local taxpayers still owed millions on it; the Seahawks' new stadium, now Lumen Field, rose on the same site.

What was T-Mobile Park called when it opened in 1999?

Safeco Field opened on July 15, 1999 under a 20-year naming deal with the Seattle insurer; T-Mobile bought the rights in December 2018 and the retractable-roof ballpark became T-Mobile Park in 2019.

Which team did the Seahawks rout 43-8 in Super Bowl XLVIII?

The Denver Broncos fell behind 12 seconds in on a safety, the quickest opening score in Super Bowl history, and MVP Malcolm Smith, a seventh-round draft pick, later returned an interception for a touchdown.

By what name were Seahawks fans long known before a trademark deal with Texas A&M changed it?

The 12th Man, honoured with a retired number 12 since 1984, twice set the Guinness crowd-noise record in 2013; after a 2016 deal with Texas A&M, the team began calling its fans the 12s.

The Seahawks are named after which bird?

The osprey, a fish-eating bird of prey, has long been called the sea hawk; the team's name was picked in 1975 from a public contest that drew more than 20,000 entries.

Which team did the SuperSonics beat for their only NBA title, in 1979?

The Washington Bullets had beaten Seattle in seven games in the 1978 Finals; a year later the Sonics won the rematch in five, with Dennis Johnson named Finals MVP.

Who headed the group that owned the SuperSonics from 2001 to 2006?

Howard Schultz's Basketball Club of Seattle bought the Sonics in 2001 and sold them in 2006 to Clay Bennett's out-of-state group, which moved the team after the 2007-08 season.

Which Seattle team won league championships in 2004, 2010, 2018 and 2020?

The Seattle Storm won WNBA titles in 2004, 2010, 2018 and 2020, the last in a Florida bubble where the whole pandemic season was played without fans.

Which city, home of the NHL's previous newcomer, hosted the Kraken's first game?

Las Vegas hosted the opener, which the Golden Knights won 4-3; they had reached the Stanley Cup Final in their own first season, while the Kraken finished last in their division.

What name did the rebuilt KeyArena reopen under in 2021?

Climate Pledge Arena got its name when Amazon bought the rights and promoted its climate pledge instead of itself; builders kept the landmarked 1962 roof and rebuilt the arena beneath it.

Which club did the Sounders beat in penalties to win their first MLS Cup in 2016?

Toronto FC lost 5-4 on penalties after 120 goalless minutes in which Seattle failed to put a single shot on goal, something no MLS Cup winner had managed before.

Which comedian became a founding part-owner of the Sounders?

Drew Carey asked for a fans' association modelled on FC Barcelona's, so Sounders members were given a vote on whether the general manager keeps the job.

Which Major League Rugby team won the league's first two championships in 2018 and 2019?

The Seattle Seawolves won Major League Rugby's first two titles, in 2018 and 2019, even though the first head coach was denied a visa, leaving Phil Mack to coach the side while playing in it.

What was the University of Washington called in 1861?

Territorial University was its name in 1861, almost 30 years before statehood; when it moved north in 1895 it kept its ten-acre downtown campus and leased it out as the Metropolitan Tract.

Which policy did Seattle adopt in 2014, a first for a major US city?

A $15 minimum wage was the cornerstone of Kshama Sawant's winning city council campaign, and within months the mayor and council had agreed to phase it in.

Which mayor took office in Seattle in January 2026?

Katie Wilson, a transit and housing activist who led the Transit Riders Union, narrowly defeated incumbent Bruce Harrell in November 2025 and took office in January 2026.

The SuperSonics left Seattle in 2008 to become which NBA franchise?

The SuperSonics became the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008 after owner Clay Bennett moved them; a settlement kept the banners, trophies and retired jerseys in Seattle for any future NBA club.

The plants inside downtown Seattle's Amazon Spheres come mostly from which kind of habitat?

Cloud forests supply the Spheres' 40,000 or so plants; the biggest, a 55-foot fig tree nicknamed Rubi, had to be lifted in by crane.

Chihuly Garden and Glass opened in 2012 on the former site of which Seattle Center attraction?

The Fun Forest was the 1962 World's Fair midway, kept on as an amusement park; nearly fifty years later the Space Needle's owners proposed the glass museum that took its place.

The plant preserved at Seattle's Gas Works Park first made the city's gas from which fuel?

Coal was baked into gas there from 1906; the plant switched to cheaper crude oil in 1937 and shut in 1956 when natural gas reached the city, yet designer Richard Haag kept its towers as the park's centrepiece.

Through 2025, what unwanted distinction did the Mariners hold among MLB franchises?

Never appearing in a World Series set the Mariners apart from every other franchise; they came closest in 2025, losing Game 7 of the American League Championship Series to Toronto.

Which Storm legend was the first overall pick of the 2002 WNBA draft?

Sue Bird, taken first overall out of UConn in 2002, never played for another WNBA team and won five Olympic golds with the United States; in 2024 the city named a street by her home arena Sue Bird Court.

Discovery Park, Seattle's largest public park, occupies the grounds of which former Army post?

Fort Lawton opened in 1900; as the Army wound it down in 1970, Native American activists led by Bernie Whitebear occupied the post and won land there for the Daybreak Star Cultural Center.

Kerry Park, famed for its skyline view of the Space Needle, sits on the south slope of which neighbourhood?

Kerry Park sits on the south slope of Queen Anne Hill, on land lumberman Albert Kerry and his wife Katharine gave the city in 1927 so that everyone who stopped there could enjoy the view.

In which Seattle neighbourhood did the burger chain Dick's Drive-In open its first restaurant in 1954?

Wallingford got the first Dick's in 1954; founders Dick Spady, Warren Ghormley and B.O.A. Thomas kept the menu to burgers, fries and shakes, and it has barely changed since.

The Museum of Flight sits at the southern end of Boeing Field in which city just south of Seattle?

Tukwila holds the Museum of Flight at the south end of Boeing Field, though the museum's mailing address still says Seattle; its first jet-powered Air Force One was flown in for display in 1996.

Which Seattle-raised rapper topped the Hot 100 in 1992 with 'Baby Got Back'?

Sir Mix-a-Lot, born Anthony Ray, was raised in the Central District, co-founded the Nastymix label in 1983 and won a Grammy for the double-platinum hit.