Rhode Island Trivia & Tidbits
Looking for Rhode Island trivia? Try our list Rhode Island little know facts, tidbits and trivia.
—Newport (pop. 26,475) was a center of pirate activity during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Perhaps the most notorious pirate based out of the town was Thomas Tew, who was so popular with locals that crowds turned out to greet him after one of his pirating excursions.
first appeared: 5/4/2008
—A popular children’s author and Newbery Award winner known as Avi has written works such as Something Upstairs and Finding Providence: The Story of Roger Williams. He lived in Providence for several years in the 1980s and 1990s.
first appeared: 3/9/2008
—Labor union official Leonard Woodcock was born in Providence in 1911. He succeeded Walter Reuther as president of the United Automobile Workers Union in 1970 after Reuther died in a plane crash. He served in that post until 1977.
first appeared: 2/24/2008
—The Stadium Theatre in Woonsocket (pop. 43,224), built in 1926 as a movie and vaudeville theater venue, has been restored and is helping revive the arts scene in the city. The theater offers local, regional and national live entertainment and is home for the Encore Repertory Company.
first appeared: 2/10/2008
—The Lysander & Susan Flagg Museum in Central Falls (pop. 18,928) commemorates local history with its displays of maps, newspapers, photographs, paintings and artifacts. The museum also houses the Gilbert R. Merrill Textile collection, and several paintings by renowned artist Lorenzo DeNevers.
first appeared: 1/27/2008
—Sullivan Ballou, a major in the 2nd Rhode Island Volunteers during the Civil War, died of a cannonball wound in Virginia. He was immortalized in Ken Burns’ PBS documentary The Civil War for his poignant battlefield letters to his wife, Sarah.
first appeared: 1/13/2008
—Actor, screenwriter, producer, composer and songwriter Eddie Dowling, whose real name was Joseph Nelson Goucher, was born in the late 1800s in Woonsocket (pop. 43,224). He died in 1976 in North Smithfield, where part of Route 146 is named in his honor.
first appeared: 12/30/2007
—When World War I arrived in 1917, the state contributed 28,817 troops, of whom 612 died. Many of the soldiers fell victim to the Spanish influenza, a deadly virus that was carried home from the battlefront by returning troops.
first appeared: 12/2/2007
—The 1870 Rose Island Lighthouse, a mile offshore from Newport (pop. 26,475), is maintained by volunteer keepers as part of an environmental education program, which provides tours and information about lighthouse history and living. Abandoned in 1971 and reopened in 1993, the station was restored to be environmentally friendly.
first appeared: 11/18/2007
—In 1635, William Blackstone, an eccentric Anglican clergyman, became Rhode Island’s first English settler. He made his home in Cumberland (pop. 31,840), near the river that bears his name.
first appeared: 11/4/2007
—Filmmakers shooting a production in the state can make use of Dean Studios in Cumberland (pop. 31,840). The spacious former warehouse offers, among other things, existing sets for a police station and a private residence.
first appeared: 10/21/2007
—During the Revolutionary War, Rhode Island was the first colony to renounce allegiance to Great Britain and declare independence on May 4, 1776. Seven months later, the British occupied Newport (pop. 26,475), which eventually devastated the economy of the state’s most prosperous city.
first appeared: 10/7/2007
—In 1893, Rhode Island joined other states that had passed legislation establishing the first Monday in September as Labor Day, a legal holiday.
first appeared: 9/30/2007
—Pawtuxet Village, which straddles the cities of Cranston and Warwick, was established on land procured by Rhode Island founder Roger Williams in 1638. Considered one of New England’s oldest villages, it takes its name from the American Indian word for “little falls.”
first appeared: 9/9/2007
—A Rhodes Scholar as well as an Olympic medalist, Norm Taber, a student at Brown University in Providence, set the world record in 1915 by running the mile in 4:12.6 at Harvard Stadium. Taber’s time held the world record for eight years.
first appeared: 8/26/2007
—One of the many theories about the origin of a stone tower in Touro Park in Newport (pop. 26,475) is that it was built by 11th-century Viking explorers. However, most evidence suggests that the tower is a mill constructed in the mid-17th century by the state’s first Colonial governor, Benedict Arnold.
first appeared: 8/12/2007
—An effort to convert the USS Saratoga into a floating museum and education center is under way. Plans call for displaying the ship, now moored in Newport (pop. 26,475), alongside the converted Soviet submarine Juliett 484 in Providence as a monument to peace between the two countries.
first appeared: 7/29/2007
—A nursing cap that once belonged to Florence Nightingale has been on display at Westerly Hospital in Westerly (pop. 22,966) since May 12, 1965, the 145th anniversary of the heroine’s birth. The cap was donated by Mrs. Basil Hall and is believed to have come from her great-grandfather Cyrus Hamlin, a missionary who befriended Nightingale.
first appeared: 7/15/2007
—Along a sidewalk in Times Square in Pawtucket, visitors can find the handprints of three of the stars and the director of the movie American Buffalo, which was filmed at locations around the city. The stars are Dennis Franz, Dustin Hoffman and Sean Nelson, and the director is Michael Corrente.
first appeared: 7/1/2007
—Taped in various locations around the state, the PBS miniseries Adams Chronicles features Newport’s Marble House as the setting for scenes from the court of Louis XVI at Versailles, a 17th-century mansion near Paris. Other Newport (pop. 26,475) mansions provide the setting for events in England, France, Holland and Russia.
first appeared: 6/17/2007
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