Question on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader.
The river that borders Kentucky Indiana?
Allegheny popped into my head. Probably because of watching Daniel Boone and Allegheny Uprising as a kid. Boone explored the region beyond the Allegheny Mountains and extended the frontier. It’s the main Kentucky river that I know.
Contestant said Ohio river and won.
Wikipedia says the Allegheny flows into the Ohio river. Would I win or lose that question?
Lose. The Allegheny flows into the Ohio at Pittsburgh. The Ohio flows from Pitt, down along the border of WV/OH to OH/KY to IN/KY to IL/KY and eventually to the Mississippi at Cairo, IL.
Yes you would (be wrong)… the Allegheny River stops being the Allegheny River when it merges with the Monongahela at Pittsburg PA. From there on it is the Ohio River. The Allegheny never touches anything in Kentucky (nor Indiana).
The standard definition is that the Allegheny and the Monongahela join together at Pittsburgh to form the Ohio. These are the three rivers that the old Three Rivers Stadium was named after. So no, the Allegheny never gets close to Kentucky or Indiana.
Ok. Good thing I wasn’t on the show. That was a big dollar question.
Thanks
And just in case you get on the show and the questions turn to Daniel Boone; he didn’t wear a coonskin hat.
Please, please don’t get your history/geography lessons from 50’s/60’s TV and movies; that’s just wrong.
By the same reasoning, you could say that the Allegheny River flows through New Orleans. As well as the Monongahela, the Jefferson, the Yellowstone, the Platte, and a ton of other rivers I won’t bother to name. Man, there are a lot of different rivers in New Orleans!
Since the question has been answered… I learned everything I knew about US history as a kid from The Simpsons - i.e., Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth, who Bart played in a school play and killed Milhouse with a Nerf gun - other than about two weeks where we covered the New Deal. When I moved to the US, I was given a test with the rest of my 11th grade Honors US History class to see what we remembered from previous classes. I got the highest score.
Just sayin’.
I did try researching this. Google maps is pretty useless. Allegheny river shows up but zooming back it disappears. You never get a good overview of where the river flows. Google maps seems more interested in showing the towns and roads.
Found this river map thats really good for understanding in broad terms where the rivers flow. River maps aren’t that easy to find. This was the best overview I found under google images. It doesn’t show the Allegheny.
Definitely worth memorizing before getting on any game shows.
Probably because the text spelling out Allegheny and Monongahela would both be about fourteen times longer than their respective rivers on that map. 
The map actually does show parts of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, but doesn’t label them and doesn’t show their full length. For you west-coasters, folks from other countries, or folks who just aren’t good at geography, if you follow the Ohio river up until it comes to a T, the north branch of the T is the Allegheny and the south branch of the T is the Monongahela.
It didn’t stop them with “Susquehanna”. Actually, it pretty much shows the entire Allegheny. The Allegheny starts as a spring in some farmer’s field in Potter County, PA, and very early in its path loops up into NY briefly before returning into PA. You can see the detour into NY on that map.
By following “greatest volume” branches (Mississippi -> Ohio -> Allegheny), that spring is also the source of the Mississippi, BTW.
The Mississippi also loses out on the longest branch naming criterion, though this time to the Missouri, Jefferson, Beaverhead, Red Rock, Hellroaring Creek.
That’s why I quit pumping 'pane. (BTW, “big wheels” refers to propellor screws, apparently, not paddle wheels, among old rivercraft folk.)
Surprise—if you said Allegheny instead of Ohio, you’d be correct! If you were Indian and speaking 250 years ago, that is.
To the Indians, the Allegheny and Ohio were all one and the same river. For some reason, it was white people who had the idea to use the Algonquian name for the river above Pittsburgh, and the Iroquoian name from then on, making them into two different rivers instead of one. Allegheny comes from Lenape welhik hane ‘the best river’ and Ohio from Seneca ohiyo, which also means ‘the best river’ (or ‘beautiful river’). The one name is a translation of the other. I don’t know which name came first, but they were considered synonyms back in the early days. The Allegheny/Ohio was called “the best river” because of the absence of falls along the upper course, making it easy to travel in a canoe without having to get out and portage.
Cite: J. Hammond Trumbull, The Composition of Indian Geographical Names (1870), pp. 13–14.
For “Algonkin,” read “Algonquian.” The spelling of this language family’s name wasn’t settled until the 20th century.