Massachusetts Trivia & Tidbits - Page 8

Looking for Massachusetts trivia? Try our list Massachusetts little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

Harvey Ball designed the bright yellow “smiley face” in 1963 for a Worcester-based insurance company. Ball received $45 for his design, which he never trademarked.

first appeared: 8/8/2004

The plastic pink flamingo lawn ornament was introduced by Union Products of Leominster (pop. 41,303) in 1957.

first appeared: 8/1/2004

Minutemen and militia gathered at Buckman Tavern in Lexington (pop. 30,355) late on the night before the April 19, 1775, battle against British forces. In the 1920s, the tavern was faithfully restored, and its interior appears much as it did on that historic day, which sparked the American Revolution.

first appeared: 7/25/2004

Rachel Fuller Brown, born in 1898 in Springfield, and fellow researcher Elizabeth Hazen, invented the world’s first useful antifungal antibiotic, nystatin.

first appeared: 7/18/2004

Among the baseball jersey numbers retired by the Boston Red Sox are outfielder Ted Williams’ No. 9 and shortstop Joe Cronin’s No. 4, both memorialized on May 29, 1984.

first appeared: 7/11/2004

The first motorcycle made in America—a bicycle or velocipede that was powered by steam—was developed in the Roxbury section of Boston in the 1860s.

first appeared: 6/27/2004

Pulled by horses, the 1826 Granite Railway was the nation’s first railroad. It ran about four miles from the granite quarries of Quincy to the Neponset River and helped build the Bunker Hill Monument.

first appeared: 6/20/2004

Migrating shad and salmon are among the fish that use the Robert E. Barrett Fishway in Holyoke (pop. 39,838). First installed in 1955, the automatic lift on the Connecticut River is considered the most successful device of its kind on the East Coast.

first appeared: 6/13/2004

Boston astronomer Percival Lowell, founder of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., is credited with aiding in the discovery of Pluto because he believed that another planet existed beyond Neptune. Lowell died in 1916, years before Pluto was discovered in 1930.

first appeared: 6/6/2004

The Pan-Massachusetts Challenge annually draws thousands of bicyclists to ride from 89 to 192 miles across the state, raising funds for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The event, which began in 1980, is the nation’s original fund-raising bike-a-thon.

first appeared: 5/30/2004

Because of its rich oyster beds, the Cape Cod town of Billingsgate originally was named for the famous London fish market. It was later renamed Wellfleet (pop. 2,749) and remains one of the state’s leading oyster producers.

first appeared: 5/23/2004

The Peabody Museum at Phillips Academy in Andover (pop. 31,247) is a major repository of American Indian archeological collections. It was begun with a bequest from 1857 graduate Robert S. Peabody.

first appeared: 5/16/2004

The House of Seven Gables, the inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel of the same name, was built in Salem (pop. 40,407) in 1668. Restored 240 years later, it opened to the public as a museum in 1910.

first appeared: 5/9/2004

Massachusetts resident John J. Loud patented the first rolling-point writing pen in 1888, though he never developed his invention commercially. It was Hungarian Lazslo Jozsef Biro who patented and marketed his ballpoint pen 50 years later.

first appeared: 5/2/2004

The Wayside Inn in Sudbury (pop. 16,841) was immortalized in Longfellow’s poem Tales of a Wayside Inn. Innkeeper Ezekiel Howe led local patriots to Concord (pop. 16,993) to confront the British on April 19, 1775.

first appeared: 4/25/2004

In Pittsfield, at the Allendale Shopping Center parking lot, the bow of a scaled-down tanker juts up from the asphalt about 35 feet. It was created by artist Dustin Shuler in 1990, who believes in “art that puts everyday things out of context.”

first appeared: 4/18/2004

Although they sailed on to land at Plymouth in 1620, the Pilgrims’ first landing site in the New World was at the tip of Cape Cod, where Provincetown (pop. 3,431) is today. A monument commemorating that event stands on High Pole Hill.

first appeared: 4/11/2004

West Parish Meetinghouse, with construction beginning in 1717 in West Barnstable, is one of the oldest Congregational church buildings in the country. It has a Revere bell cast in 1806 and an English weathercock from 1723.

first appeared: 4/4/2004

In 2003, only 16 percent of first-year student applicants were offered admission to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. The renowned university employs 10 Nobel Prize winners.

first appeared: 3/28/2004

Theodore Seuss Geisel (1904-1991) of Springfield was author of the famous Dr. Seuss books. The American Heritage Dictionary lists him as likely creator of the word “nerd” in his 1950 book, If I Ran the Zoo.

first appeared: 3/21/2004

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