Michigan Trivia & Tidbits - Page 6

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

On Oct. 10, 1968, the Detroit Tigers won the World Series in game seven against the St. Louis Cardinals. The Tigers rallied from a 3-1 deficit to win the series, their first baseball championship since 1945.

first appeared: 9/25/2005

A bronze statue depicting three 19th-century lumbermen stands on a bluff above the Au Sable River at the Lumberman’s Monument Visitors Information Center in Oscoda (pop. 992), where displays highlight the history of the area’s lumber industry.

first appeared: 9/18/2005

To navigate around the water-fall on the St. Mary’s River at Sault Ste. Marie (pop. 16,542), 1,000-foot-long Great Lakes ships and ocean-going vessels pass through the Soo Locks. The river is Lake Superior’s only connection to the other four lakes.

first appeared: 9/11/2005

Leader Dogs for the Blind, an organization that trains seeing-eye dogs and their owners, is based in Rochester, Mich. (pop. 10,467), not Rochester, Minn., as reported in a previous edition of American Profile.

first appeared: 8/28/2005

Originally built and operated in the Netherlands, the 240-year-old DeZwaan Windmill was a gift from the Netherlands 40 years ago to Holland (pop. 35,048). The 12-story windmill is the centerpiece of the city’s Windmill Island.

first appeared: 8/14/2005

Born a slave in Hurley, N.Y., in 1797, Isabella Baumfree renamed herself Sojourner Truth and became a women’s rights advocate and abolitionist. The Sojourner Truth Institute in Battle Creek (pop. 53,364) highlights her story.

first appeared: 7/31/2005

The world’s largest "living roof" tops Ford Motor Co.’s renovated Rouge Factory Complex in Dearborn, where the company’s F-150 trucks are built. Spanning 10.4 acres, the roof is planted with sedum, which helps insulate the building while it collects and filters rainwater for a natural storm-water management system.

first appeared: 7/17/2005

A winding and scenic stretch of state highway M-119 between Harbor Springs (pop. 1,567) and Cross Village (pop. 294) is called the Tunnel of Trees for its miles of overhanging trees with interlocking limbs along the Lake Michigan shoreline.

first appeared: 6/19/2005

Each May, hundreds of Charlevoix (pop. 2,994) residents turn out for Operation Petunia to plant thousands of petunias, a curbside tradition since 1982, when 450 volunteers first planted 600 flats of the colorful flowers throughout town.

first appeared: 6/5/2005

Leader Dogs for the Blind, founded by the Lions Club in 1939, trains 300 dog and student teams a year. The organization, headquartered in Rochester, places 7-week-old German shepherds, golden retrievers and Labrador retrievers in "foster homes" for one year before matching them with students who complete a 25-day training course with their dogs.

first appeared: 6/5/2005

In 1924, J.L. Hudson in Detroit became the nation’s first department store to install air conditioning. In the summer, overheated bargain hunters sometimes dropped while they shopped before the "centrifugal chiller" from the Carrier Co. was installed.

first appeared: 5/22/2005

East Lansing (pop. 46,525) is home to Michigan State University, not the University of Michigan as reported in a previous edition. The University of Michigan is in Ann Arbor.

first appeared: 5/8/2005

In 1884, Thomas Clegg and his father, John, built the state’s first recorded self-propelled vehicle, in Memphis (pop. 1,129). Their vehicle, called The Thing, predated Henry Ford’s first car, the Quadricycle, by 12 years.

first appeared: 5/8/2005

In 1959, Berry Gordy Jr. borrowed $800 from his family and opened a recording studio he called "Hitsville USA" in a Detroit house. The house today is the Motown Historical Museum, a shrine to the "Motown sound" and artists such as Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross and the Supremes.

first appeared: 4/24/2005

One of the nation’s least visited national parks is Isle Royale, a wilderness island in Lake Superior, accessible only by boat or seaplane.

first appeared: 4/10/2005

Charles Kirsch solved the problem of sagging curtains with his invention of a strong, flat curtain rod in 1907 and founded Kirsh Co. in Sturgis (pop. 11,285). Among the company’s later innovations were the telescoping flat rod and the adjustable traverse rod.

first appeared: 3/27/2005

When inventor Thomas Edison died in 1931, his last breath reportedly was captured in a test tube as a memorial, and the tube was given to his friend Henry Ford. The tube is housed at Dearborn’s Henry Ford Museum.

first appeared: 3/13/2005

Annually from May through July, Piping Plover Patrol volunteers keep watch over the little birds nesting along the Great Lakes shoreline.

first appeared: 2/27/2005

While working for General Motors Corp., John De Lorean of Detroit designed the Pontiac GTO, introduced in 1964. He founded the De Lorean Motor Co. 11 years later and produced about 8,000 sports cars, featuring top-hinged gull-wing doors.

first appeared: 2/13/2005

Saginaw (pop. 61,799) dentist Val Kolpakov smiles about his toothpaste collection, one of the largest in the world. His 1,000 varieties, some dating to the late 1800s, include a Scotch whiskey-flavored paste and a Dr. West’s Hopalong Cassidy paste.

first appeared: 1/30/2005

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