Pennsylvania Trivia & Tidbits - Page 13

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

Berlin’s Fife and Drum Corps is America’s oldest, formed in 1782 when young George Johnson returned to Berlin (current pop. 2,064) after the Revolutionary War, where he had served as a fifer.

first appeared: 8/11/2002

Theophilus Van Kannel, an inventor who began manufacturing revolving doors in 1888 in Philadelphia, received several humanitarian awards for saving lives due to the door’s tendency to keep out drafts.

first appeared: 8/4/2002

The first World Series night game was played in Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh in 1971 against the Baltimore Orioles. The Pirates won the series.

first appeared: 7/28/2002

The world’s first church service broadcast—over KDKA, the nation’s first commercial radio station—originated in the Calvary Protestant Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh on Jan. 2, 1921.

first appeared: 7/21/2002

The longest perfect baseball game was 12 no-hit innings pitched in 1959 by Harvey Haddix of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Unfortunately, Haddix lost the one-hitter to Milwaukee in the 13th inning.

first appeared: 7/14/2002

The first American institution devoted to studying science, the American Philosophical Society, was founded in Philadelphia in 1743. The impetus for the society came from Benjamin Franklin, but members included such notables as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

first appeared: 7/7/2002

The first televised news conference was held in 1948 by presidential candidate Thomas Dewey at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. Dewey lost the election to Harry Truman.

first appeared: 6/30/2002

Crystal Cave near Kutztown (pop. 5,067), discovered in 1871, is the state’s oldest operating commercial cave and its most often visited.

first appeared: 6/23/2002

The first U.S. Navy ship to have an airplane land and take off on it (Jan. 18, 1911) was the USS Pennsylvania.

first appeared: 6/16/2002

Among Pennsylvania firsts are the odometer (Ben Franklin, c. 1755), book matches (1889), a pencil with an attached eraser (1858), the typewriter (1881), and the snap-top can (1962).

first appeared: 6/9/2002

The world’s first broadcast by a commercially licensed radio station was the Harding-Cox presidential election returns of Nov. 2, 1920, on Pittsburgh’s KDKA radio.

first appeared: 6/2/2002

The first nuclear power plant for the commercial production of electricity was built for the Duquesne Light Co. in 1957 in Shippingport (pop. 227) near Pittsburgh.

first appeared: 5/26/2002

Charles Hires, a Philadelphia pharmacist, introduced a new drink at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876. First selling it as a dry mixture, then as a liquid concentrate, he was soon bottling the popular drink—root beer.

first appeared: 5/19/2002

The game of Bingo, created by Hugh J. Ward of Pittsburgh in the early 1920s, started as a carnival game. Ward secured a copyright in 1924 and wrote a book of Bingo rules in 1933.

first appeared: 5/12/2002

Town names in Pennsylvania include Berlin, Dublin, Belfast, Bagdad, Moscow, Bethlehem, and Nazareth—along with Indiana, California, Washington, and Jersey Shore.

first appeared: 5/5/2002

America’s first volunteer fire company was formed in Philadelphia in 1736 by Benjamin Franklin and others.

first appeared: 4/28/2002

The first Bible printed in America was published by Christopher Sower of Germantown in 1743. He also issued the first German language newspaper in America in 1739.

first appeared: 4/21/2002

Carlisle (pop. 17,970), founded in 1751, was once home to the nation’s first school for American Indians, the Carlisle Indian School, of which Olympic athlete Jim Thorpe was an alumnus.

first appeared: 4/14/2002

Stephen Foster, the composer of music often thought of as songs of the South—Oh, Susannah, Old Kentucky Home, and Camptown Races—was born and raised in Pittsburgh.

first appeared: 4/7/2002

John Bartram, appointed King’s Botanist in America, sent hundreds of plants back to the Old World from the nursery he founded in Philadelphia in 1728. Bartram’s Garden, the oldest botanical garden in the United States, can still be visited.

first appeared: 3/31/2002

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