Ohio Fun Facts



Mural on the side of a building in Franklin, Ohio



• The first ambulance service and the first professional fire department were established in Cincinnati.
• Ohio’s official rock song is “Hang On, Sloopy.”
• America’s first traffic light began blinking in Cleveland, Ohio on August 5, 1914.
• The Christmas song “Up on the Housetop” was composed by Benjamin Hanby in Westerville, Ohio.
• Ohio’s state fossil is the trilobite.
• 50% of the United States population lives within a 500 mile radius of Columbus, Ohio.
• The creator of Silly Bandz—silicone bracelets shaped like animals, letters and other objects—is Robert Croak of Toledo.
• Ohio has the only pennant-shaped state flag in the U.S.
• The pop-top can was invented by Ermal Fraze in Kettering, Ohio.
• The Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio caught fire in 1936 and again in 1952.
• Cincinnati was the first American city in which greeting cards were published at Gibson Greeting Card Company.
• Tara Leigh Patrick, better known as Carmen Electra, was born in Cincinnati and went to high school at Princeton High School in Springdale, Ohio.
• The designer of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., Maya Ying Lin, was born in Athens, Ohio.
• Miami University in Oxford, Ohio houses the 1833 home of William Holmes McGuffey, who wrote the first edition of the McGuffey Readers.
• In 2007, the world record for largest Irish dance was set in Dublin, Ohio.