Cleveland IQ
Forest City Fun Facts
Famous Firsts • Alan Freed’s Moondog Coronation Ball, held at the Cleveland Arena on March 21, 1952 is regarded as the first ever rock concert. • Cleveland was the world’s first city to be fully lighted by electricity in 1879. • Cleveland was home to the first traffic light which began operating on August 5, 1914. • East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland was the site of the first pedestrian button for the control of a traffic light in 1948. • John Lambert of Ohio City made the first automobile in the US in 1891.
Photo Information: Top left to right: First Traffic Light; Severance Hall; Superman; Hope Memorial Bridge; Marblehead Lighthouse; The Lombardi Trophy at The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH;
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• The Arcade, located downtown on Euclid Avenue, was the first large-scale indoor shopping mall in the United States. It first opened in 1890 and was financed in part by two of Cleveland’s most prominent citizens, John D. Rockefeller and Louis Severence among others. • Cleveland hosted the first Monday Night Football game between the Browns and New York Jets on September 21, 1970. • The first newspaper for African Americans, The Aliened American was published here in 1853. • The world’s first electric streetcar, invented by Charles Brush, was operated here in 1884. • Cleveland’s 225 kW Vestas machine is the first utility-scale wind turbine to generate electricity in the heart of an American city. It was installed by the Great Lakes Science Center in June 2006.
Fun Facts • Life Savers Candy was invented in Cleveland by Clarence Crane in 1912. • Euclid Avenue used to be called “Millionaire’s Row” and was home to John D. Rockefeller. • Cleveland was originally spelled “Cleaveland,” named after General Moses Cleaveland. The “a” was dropped so that the name could fit into a newspaper’s masthead. • “Hang on Sloopy” by the McCoys, is the city’s official song. • Nicknames for Cleveland include: “The Forest City”, “ “Metropolis of the Western Reserve”, “Sixth City”, “The Rock ‘n’ Roll Capital of the World”, and “C-Town”. • The first unassisted triple play in a Major League Baseball World Series was in 1920 by second baseman Bill Wambsganss of the Cleveland Indians.
• The NFL’s Vince Lombardi trophy is awarded to the Super Bowl Champions each year and is handcrafted by Tiffany & Co. It was initially inscribed with the words “World Professional Football Championship” but was officially renamed in 1970 in memory of legendary Green Bay Packers head coach Vince Lombardi after his sudden death from cancer and to commemorate his victories in the first two Super Bowls. The Lombardi Trophy lives year round at the Pro Football Hall of Fame. • The Cuyahoga River, which runs through Cleveland, is also known as “The River that Caught Fire,” since it has been aflame on 13 different occasions. • The world’s largest rubber stamp, created for the Standard Oil Company, is located in Cleveland’s Willard Park. • Before there was Metropolis, there was Cleveland. When comic writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster first came up with their iconic superhero creation in 1933,
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