# Most interesting thing about your hometown **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 6, 2010, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719 "2010-11-06T18:25:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/61 "2010-11-08T16:40:42Z")
> [@Sunspace](#): > > We have one [kind of like that](http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=toronto&sll=43.6525,-79.381667&sspn=0.50079,0.74707&g=toronto&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Toronto,+Toronto+Division,+Ontario&ll=43.657739,-79.354876&spn=0.003912,0.005836&t=h&z=18&layer=c&cbll=43.657685,-79.355058&panoid=OMmp6EPtH00fzpAj6rPSbQ&cbp=12,250.63,,0,17.66) in Toronto, but it’s more of an elevated merge. Your Y-bridge is a full intersection. That’s on the approaches to a bridge. The Zanesville bridge is over the confluence of two rivers (the Licking and Muskingum Rivers). ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/62 "2010-11-08T22:02:36Z")
Wrentham, Massachusetts is the former home of Helen Keller and Horace Mann. It also used to be a lake resort town for wealthy Bostonians and was a leading manufacturer of straw hats during the industrial revolution. It’s also one of the oldest towns in America, having been incorporated in 1673. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Onimous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ea5d25/32.png) [@Ann\_Onimous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Onimous)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/63 "2010-11-08T22:36:52Z")
[Dr. Ephraim McDowell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephraim_McDowell) performed the world’s first ovariotomy in 1809. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/64 "2010-11-08T22:42:26Z")
The city of my birth had a [rather long civil war](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_Civil_War) fought over it. ---
**Author:** ![Ura-Maru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/51bf81/32.png) [@Ura-Maru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ura-Maru)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/65 "2010-11-08T23:02:18Z")
A fantastic collection of restaurants, bars, shops, and music clubs, much made possible by some smart, long-forgotten legislation designed to make the town more ‘walkable.’ A huge, vibrant arts community, both recent and historical. A strong educational (Five Colleges AND the Seven Sisters) political, and even religious tradition. But once the whole “Lesbianville, USA” thing comes up, that’s all anyone remembers. – The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, too. And a surprising number of webcomics. All, I’ll admit, more fun than The Bell Jar . . . ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2010, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/66 "2010-11-08T23:55:53Z")
My hometown’s claim to fame is a spiritualist camp founded in the late 1800’s. Yep, they have seances there weekly. ---
**Author:** ![RadicalPi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/radicalpi/32/9806_2.png) [@RadicalPi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RadicalPi)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/67 "2010-11-09T00:42:07Z")
I am from Berkeley, Illinois, the Hand Dryer Capital of the World! Which is pretty much as good as you can get given that the town has only 5,000 people in it. I don’t really like hand dryers all that much, but the ones the hometwon company makes are common all over the world. I like that I get to see a small piece of home wherever I go. > [@flodnak](#): > > My original hometown is […] a surprisingly boring place that tourists flock to for their own bizarre reasons. The place I live now, Santa Barbara, California, is probably the single most overrated place in the western hemisphere. It’s nice, I admit, but not really worth the insane cost of everything. I think that tourists flock here mostly because of a soap opera that ended 17 years ago. Either that, or people just want to see where Kinsey Millhone hangs out. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/68 "2010-11-09T01:17:30Z")
This thread has inspired me to create another – [The Crime rate challenge: Beat my hometown of Harvey, IL](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=584772) I invite you there to compare your hometown to mine in terms of hellholishness. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/69 "2010-11-09T01:42:48Z")
The most interesting thing about the loathsome hole I was born in is that a mediocre rock band which achieved some moderate international success named themselves after it in the very same year I exercised the poor judgement of being born there. (You may recall a couple of their tunes being run into the ground on early eighties top 40. I think may have been bad mojo for them to use the word “gone” so much. “Gone gone gone, she been gone so long, she been gone gone gone so long,” and “Whatcha gonna do when I’m gone, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when I’m gone?” are their most recognizable contributions to the pop cannon.) I’ve lived in Vancouver for most of my life. I don’t want to bore you by enumerating all the interesting things about it. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/70 "2010-11-09T01:55:46Z")
:smack: Went to Wikipedia, and the Resolves are more analogous to the Declaration of Independence. ---
**Author:** ![zamboniracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9a140/32.png) [@zamboniracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zamboniracer)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/71 "2010-11-09T02:36:12Z")
My hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, was named after a fellow named [Moses Cleaveland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Cleaveland). No one is quite sure why the spelling is different. ---
**Author:** ![etv78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d78d45/32.png) [@etv78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/etv78)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/72 "2010-11-09T02:42:25Z")
> [@zamboniracer](#): > > My hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, was named after a fellow named [Moses Cleaveland](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_Cleaveland). No one is quite sure why the spelling is different. The story I’ve heard: Cleaveland wouldn’t fit on newspaper masthead, so the “a” was omitted to make it fit, and the spelling stuck. ---
**Author:** ![Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/le_ministre_de_l_au-dela/32/12181_2.png) [@Le\_Ministre\_de\_l\_au-dela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Ministre_de_l_au-dela)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/73 "2010-11-09T02:49:56Z")
My hometown is also the hometown of violinist James Ehnes, speculative fiction writer Karl Schroeder and the poet Lori Cayer. Hockey players include Ron Hextall, Turk Broda, Ken Wregget and Bryce Salvador. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/74 "2010-11-09T04:09:36Z")
My hometown, Tucson, is one of if not the oldest continuously inhabited city in the US depending on who you ask. [reference, picked at random](http://www.pjjune.net/history/tucson/) ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/75 "2010-11-09T04:56:31Z")
Born and raised in Waco, Texas. Does “weird” equal “interesting”? ---
**Author:** ![GiantRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@GiantRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GiantRat)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/76 "2010-11-09T05:38:40Z")
I’m from the “carousel capitol of the world.” Oh yeah, and the place where that crazy bastard shot 13 fellow immigrants at the American Civic Association… place has really gone downhill. ---
**Author:** ![Foldup\_Rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/df788c/32.png) [@Foldup\_Rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Foldup_Rabbit)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/77 "2010-11-09T05:48:53Z")
The town where I grew up is home to (arguably) the world’s second most famous lake monster. ---
**Author:** ![Waterman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b2d939/32.png) [@Waterman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waterman)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2010, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/78 "2010-11-09T08:19:30Z")
The town that I currently live in was purchased, lock, stock and barrel by the United States Government in 1942 and remained the property of the US until 1958 when the land (and structures) were sold to private ownership. Neither the original owners nor their descendants were given any priority in buying the property back. ---
**Author:** ![user\_hostile](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/user_hostile/32/474_2.png) [@user\_hostile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/user_hostile)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/79 "2010-11-10T05:17:46Z")
Zac Efron comes from my hometown. Weather’s pretty good, too. ---
**Author:** ![moldrites](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@moldrites](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moldrites)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2010, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719/80 "2010-11-10T07:09:00Z")
Harvey Ball created the Smiley face in my hometown. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-interesting-thing-about-your-hometown/559719.md?page=5)