X-Nico

90 unusual facts about Philadelphia


1975 college football season

#6 Penn State was the only other top 10 team to play the weekend, and struggled to defeat Temple University in a game in Philadelphia, winning 26-25.

Adelaide Park Lands

Influenced by William Penn's design of Philadelphia, Light set out the city of Adelaide on a grid of one square mile, interspaced by wide boulevards and incorporating five large public squares.

Alexis Gritchenko

Dr. Albert Barnes acquired seventeen Gritchenko's paintings for his collection, now The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.

Alfred Trower

Trower then transferred to London Rowing Club and in August 1876 Trower, together with Gulston, R H Labat, and J Rowell went to Philadelphia on the steam ship Wyoming to take part in the town's centennial regatta.

Animal Soup

It surfaced when Simon Townshend was in the studio in Philadelphia, and producer Andy Kravitz asked him to sing something he hated.

Arthur Bisguier

After a poor performance in the U.S. Open in 1953, he entered the Philadelphia Candidates' Tournament for the U.S. Championship and came through with a first place finish and another over-2600 performance.

Arthur J. Audett

He died suddenly on March 23, 1921, at the Adelphia Hotel in Philadelphia, of "heart disease".

Augustus Jackson

Augustus Jackson (born April 16, 1808) was an African-American candy confectioner from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Avery Corman

It was produced in regional theater in Philadelphia in 2004, a project curtailed with the death of Coleman that year.

Bahamasair

During the early 1980s, Bahamasair unsuccessfully tried to expand to the Northeast United States, opening flights to Philadelphia, Washington DC (Dulles) and Newark, New Jersey.

Betty Liu

Liu was born in Hong Kong, moved to the United States when she was three years old, and was raised in Philadelphia.

Buddhism in Kalmykia

The Šajin Lama (Supreme Lama) of the Kalmyks is Erdne Ombadykow, a Philadelphia-born man of Kalmykian origin who was brought up as a Buddhist monk in a Tibetan monastery in India from the age of seven and who was recognized by the Dalai Lama as the reincarnation of the Buddhist saint Telo Rinpoche.

Cape May Stage

In 2008, the theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s “The Price” which starred Robert Prosky and his two sons, transferred to The Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, the nation’s oldest theatre, and then to Theatre J in Washington D.C. to be part of a national Miller celebration.

Ciarán Mullan

While in the United States in 2007 he was played for the Four Provinces team (from Philadelphia) that won the New York Senior Football Championship.

Clarence Howard Clark, Jr.

He was an avid yachtman who was a member of the Corinthian Yacht Club of Philadelphia; the New York Yacht Club; and the Eastern Yacht Club and the Corinthian, both of Marblehead, Massachusetts.

Clarence Wilbur Taber

Clarence Wilbur Taber (1870–1967) was an American businessman best known for publishing Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary with the F.A. Davis Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Clarion, Utah

Brown organized the JACA in January 1910 and listed its primary office in Philadelphia's West Parkside neighborhood, with 250 members, branches in New York and Baltimore, and with the express purpose of, "Settling on farms and mutual aid".

Cordelia Botkin

John Dunning, his career destroyed by the revelations during the trial, had died two years previously in Philadelphia.

Daniel Barnz

Barnz was born Daniel Bernstein in a suburb of Philadelphia, and later changed his surname to an amalgamation of Bernstein and Schwartz, the surname of his partner of almost two decades, Ben Schwartz.

Darcy Richardson

Although a registered Democrat and elected Montgomery County precinct committeeman at the time, Richardson was nominated to run for the position of Pennsylvania Auditor General in 1980 on the Philadelphia-based Consumer Party's ballot line.

Deborah Spungen

Deborah Spungen, born into a Jewish family in Philadelphia, has been the owner of a natural foods store, a direct mail consultant, a member of the Philadelphia Crime and Elderly Coalition, and founded the Philadelphia chapter of Parents of Murdered Children.

Diet-to-Go

These locations act as fresh food pick up locations currently in five cities across the U.S. including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington D.C.

Duane Litfin

Litfin was succeeded as president on July 1, 2010 by Philip Ryken, formerly senior pastor of the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and 1988 graduate of Wheaton.

Edmond-Charles Genêt

Instead of traveling to the then-capital of Philadelphia to present himself to U.S. President George Washington for accreditation, Genêt stayed in South Carolina.

Edward Robins

Robins was educated in Philadelphia at the Broad Street Military College (sometimes referred to as "institute" or "academy"; it no longer exists).

Eliza Potter

Upon marriage she moved to Philadelphia and gave birth to two mulatto children; however, she soon gave up the married life to go "roving".

Emily W. Sunstein

A charter member of Americans for Democratic Action (founded in 1947), she later became the first woman to serve as head of the Philadelphia chapter of the American Jewish Committee.

Fergus Falls, Minnesota

The town hall was modeled after Independence Hall in Philadelphia.

Francis Ayer

Ayer taught in district schools and spent one year studying at the University of Rochester before moving to Philadelphia.

Francis Gulston

In August 1876 Guslon, together with R H Labat, A Trower and J Rowell went to Philadelphia on the steam ship Wyoming to take part in the town's centennial regatta.

Gerald Austin McHugh, Jr.

Since 2004, he has been a partner at the Philadelphia law firm of Raynes McCarty, where he handles complex civil litigation involving tort, insurance and civil rights claims.

Ghost Train: The Studio B Sessions

The idea for the song was inspired by an old train depot in Stuart's home town of Philadelphia, Mississippi.

Hank Dogs

Their first album Bareback, produced by Joe Boyd, was well received and was named Record of the Month for WXPN in Philadelphia.

Harold Brittan

Most of his family had moved to the U.S. where they settled in Philadelphia and Brittan decided to join them.

Henry Auchey

Henry B. Auchy (1861–1922) was a businessman famous for, along with Chester Albright, creating the Philadelphia Toboggan Company (later renamed Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on January 21, 1904.

Huntington Wilson

Wilson retired from government service in 1913 and settled in Philadelphia.

Ida Pruitt

In 1918, she came back to the United States and studied social work in Boston and Philadelphia until hired by the Rockefeller Foundation in New York as head of the Department of Social Services at the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC) where she remained until 1938.

Jacques Reich

In 1873 he came to the U.S. and continued his studies at the National Academy of Design in New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

James Curtis Booth

James Curtis Booth (28 July 1810 – 21 March 1888) was a United States chemist who was the melter and refiner at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia for many years.

James Lawrence Cabell

He then studied medicine in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Paris, and became Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the University of Virginia, where he was chairman of the faculty in 1846 and 1847.

Jason Michaels

Michaels was arrested on July 3, 2005, after allegedly punching a police officer as he left a nightclub in Old City, Philadelphia.

Joellyn Auklandus

A Philadelphia native, Auklandus has received recognition for her work, including nominations for the R.A.C. Squiddy Award for Favorite Comics Writer in 1995, 1996 and 1998.

Johannes von Trapp

Johannes von Trapp (born January 17 1939, Philadelphia) is a former member of the Trapp Family Singers, whose lives were the inspiration for the play and movie The Sound of Music.

John Bachmann

In 1849 and 1850, he created and published a series of American views, including views of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Havana.

The one other known painting by Bachmann, a version of one of his views of Philadelphia, hangs in the Free Library of Philadelphia.

John Christopher Moller

He was born in Germany and emigrated to the Philadelphia in 1790 after spending almost 10 years in England and some time in New York.

Jonathan R. Steinberg

He clerked at the Law Firm of Steinberg, Richman, Greenstein and Price in Philadelphia and served as a Research Assistant at the American Law Institute, prior to serving as a Law Clerk for then Circuit Judge Warren E. Burger on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1963-64.

Kat Lehmer

While attending the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia where she studied painting, drawing, and sculpture, Lehmer was inspired by the works of an earlier alumnus, David Lynch, to pursue her interest in film making.

Kate McPhelim Cleary

After a brief return to Ireland to live with relatives, financial hardships forced the family to emigrate to Philadelphia.

King Britt

They came together to curate an evening of music for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia to coincide with a Sun Ra exhibit, that was touring.

Lil' Kim: Countdown to Lockdown

The 6-part show followed Lil' Kim's last 14 days of freedom before she entered the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for a 366 day sentence.

Linda Joy Holtzman

She left the synagogue and later that year became spiritual leader of Beth Ahavah, a LGBT congregation in Center City, Philadelphia.

Linda Swain

In 2002, Swain began the Moms on the Move show on NBC10 in Philadelphia, USA.

Longstanton

Churches modelled after its architecture have been built as far away as Philadelphia (see Church of St. James the Less) and South Dakota.

Manayunk

Manayunk, Philadelphia, a neighborhood in the U.S. city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Mark Dobies

Mark Dobies (born April 3, 1959 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American actor.

Marshall Earle Reid

He was born on 31 August 1887 in Philadelphia to Betsey Holmes Marshall and David Christopher Reid.

On May 4, 1912 he started from Hempstead, Long Island intending to fly to Philadelphia.

Martin Luther Stoever

In 1862 the presidency of Girard College, Philadelphia, was offered to him, and in 1869 the professorship of Latin in Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania, but he declined both.

Matthew Petersen

In 2004, Petersen played a game for the United States against Australia in an exhibition match in Philadelphia, qualifying for the American side under the parent rule.

Max Rosenthal

In 1847 he went to Paris, where he studied lithography, drawing, and painting with M. Thurwanger, with whom he came to Philadelphia in 1849, and completed his studies.

Michael Aronov

Aronov has worked with Terrence McNally on the world premiere of Unusual Acts of Devotion in Philadelphia.

Mickey Goldmill

Some time after his retirement (in 1948), he opened a boxing gym in Philadelphia, Mighty Mick's Boxing, and began to train fighters.

Miquon, Pennsylvania

Located between the Roxborough section of Philadelphia and the Whitemarsh Township community of Spring Mill, Miquon is approximately bounded by Barren Hill Road, Ridge Pike, Manor Road, and the Schuylkill River.

Noel Alumit

Alumit's play Mr. and Mrs. La Questa Go Dancing was produced by Teatro Ng Tanan in San Francisco and also in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Boston, and Philadelphia.

Pallam Raju

He is an alumnus of the Hyderabad Public School (HPS), Begumpet (1971–1979), an Electronics & Communications Engineering graduate (BE) from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh (1979–1983) and an MBA from Temple University, Philadelphia, USA (1983–1985).

Pearl Van Sciver

Pearl was born in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia in 1896, the only child of parents Arnold Aiman and Emma G. Rorer.

Pennsylvania Keystoners

As a result, Rooney and Bell would take their Philadelphia operation back to Pittsburgh and rename it the Steelers while Thompson, could move Rooney's original franchise to Philadelphia and play as the Eagles.

Peter Stretch

The first settlers of Philadelphia were mainly artisans, many of them belonging to the English gentry, who sold their property and came to America to escape religious persecution.

His shop was at the southeast corner of Front and Chestnut Streets, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, then called “Peter Stretch’s Corner at the Sign of the Dial".

Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Bridge No. 1

In 1838, the PW&B built the first permanent bridge here to complete the first direct rail link from Philadelphia to Wilmington, Delaware, and Baltimore, Maryland.

Piper City, Illinois

Piper City was laid out in 1867 by Samuel Cross of New York and William A. Piper (5 March 1820 – 6 July 1896) of Philadelphia.

Richard Bache

Richard Bache (1737–1811), born in Settle, Yorkshire, England, immigrated to Philadelphia, in the colony of Pennsylvania, where he was a businessman, a marine insurance underwriter, and later served as head of the American Post Office.

Richard Sprague

As First Assistant District Attorney in Philadelphia Sprague run up a record of 69 homicide convictions out of 70 prosecutions.

Robert Coltman

He received his medical training at Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, and in 1881 began the practice of medicine.

Roy Allen

Roy Allen (1918–1991) was an American, born in the north Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney.

Rusty Stevens

Stevens was reported to have left the show in 1960 because his family moved from Burbank to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, although Barbara Billingsley, who played "June Cleaver" on the series, said in a TV Archive interview that Stevens was dropped because his overbearing mother caused grief for the producers of the series {TV Legends interview}

Samson Levy

Samson Levy was a prominent Jewish merchant in Philadelphia during the Colonial Period.

Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn

She remained there for the majority of her life until her death in Philadelphia in 1959.

St Patrick's Grammar School, Downpatrick

In the area of Performing Arts, the school has brought a number of productions to fruition over the years, the most recent being Philadelphia, Here I Come! and The Phantom of the Opera.

Stephen Vail

Stephen Vail (1780–1864) was a founding partner of the Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia and the creator of the Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New Jersey.

Stubbington

Details were found by Martin Wilson in the American Weekly Mercury, a Philadelphia newspaper dated 20 to 27 September 1733.

Sue Ball

Susan Gabrielle "Sue" Ball (born March 2, 1967 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American actress.

Tanya Hamilton

Her first feature film was Night Catches Us, a portrayal of former Black Panthers reuniting in 1976 Philadelphia.

Ten Mile Loop

From here, it would head northeast through Montgomery County, bypassing the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia to the northwest.

Thomas G. Waites

Thomas G. Waites (born January 8, 1955) is an American actor and acting instructor born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Tunku Alif Hussein Saifuddin Al-Amin

He was educated at The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential (IAHP), Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

William Biles

They went hence in a shallop to Upland, stopping at Takany (Tacony), a village of Swedes and Finns, where they drank good beer.

William J. Ciancaglini

While covering the issue for Philadelphia magazine, staff writer Jason Fagone "spoke to more than 30 sources" while preparing his article.

William Millward

Millward was born in the old district of Northern Liberties in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.


1990 NBA Playoffs

Game 5 @ Chicago Stadium, Chicago (May 16): Chicago 117, Philadelphia 99

56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team

Units of the 111th Infantry trace their lineage back to 1747, when Benjamin Franklin first established his famed "Associators" in Philadelphia.

Addicted to Bad Ideas

In 2009 World Inferno performed this work at festivals such as Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival, Philadelphia's Live Arts Festival, Montclair State University's Peak Performances series, and South Carolina's Spoleto Festival USA.

Albert Betz

He was the great uncle of the Author Alfred J. Betz from Philadelphia, and great nephew of Vladimir Alekseyevich Betz the discoverer of the pyramidal cell.

Angelina Weld Grimké

Both Angelina Weld Grimké and her great aunt Sarah Moore Grimké appear as main characters in Ain Gordon's 2013 play If She Stood, commissioned by the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia.

Barry Reisman

Barry Reisman is the host of The Barry Reisman Show, currently an hour-long, Monday-Friday radio program playing on WWDB, 860 kHz AM, in Philadelphia, featuring klezmer and other Jewish music.

Beirut Memorial

Other memorials to the victims of the Beirut barracks bombing have been erected in the United States, including those at Penn's Landing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

Chaput

Charles J. Chaput, the archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia

Claude Giroux

On June 20, 2012, Giroux was named the cover athlete for NHL 13 at the NHL awards in Las Vegas; he became the first Philadelphia Flyer on an EA Sports NHL video game cover since Eric Lindros on NHL 99.

Doc Cheatham

Cheatham played in Albert Wynn's band (and occasionally substituted for Armstrong at the Vendome Theater), and recorded on sax with Ma Rainey before moving to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1927, where he worked with the bands of Bobby Lee and Wilbur de Paris before moving to New York City the following year.

East Oak Lane, Philadelphia

East Oak Lane is defined by the borders of Cheltenham Avenue at the north (the border between Philadelphia and Cheltenham Township), Broad Street on the west, Godfrey Avenue at the south, and the Tacony Creek to the east.

Eliphalet Chapin

In the 18th century, Philadelphia was one of the most important cities both before and after the American Revolution and was a center of style and culture.

Exeter, Pennsylvania

In the 1830s the region entered a boom period and began shipping coal by the Pennsylvania Canal, and by the 1840s even down the Lehigh Canal to Allentown, Philadelphia, Trenton, Wilmington, New York City, and other east coast cities and ports via the connecting engineering works of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company such as the upper Lehigh Canal, the Ashley Planes and the early Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad, along with other railroads that flocked to or were born in the area.

Francis Howard, 5th Baron Howard of Effingham

On 23 June 1684, Lord Howard sailed from Virginia for Albany, New York with his daughter, Philadelphia, where he and New York Governor Thomas Dongan brokered a July peace treaty with the Iroquois.

George Molchan

Molchan was hired and was based in Chicago; the other additional Wienermobiles were based in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Madison, Wisconsin, the company's home.

George Sotter

In a recent episode of Antiques Roadshow on PBS, filmed in Philadelphia, a Sotter oil painting was appraised $120,000-$180,000, much to the delight of its visibly stunned owner.

Gordon Wasserman, Baron Wasserman

He worked with the Police Commissioners of New York City, Philadelphia and Miami as well as the Department of Justice.

James A. Leonard

In 1861, Leonard visited Philadelphia, where he played a match against William Dwight, who later became a general in the Union Army.

John Tunnicliff

At Liverpool he purchased a vessel fully manned, and with a considerable number of passengers on board (several families of which we shall have occasion to notice in this work), he sailed again for Philadelphia, where he arrived in the summer of 1758.

Joseph Edward Kurtz

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a frequent critic of the church hierarchy, indicates that he fits the mold of a “smiling conservative” in the vein of New York’s Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, who is “very gracious but still holds the same positions” as a more pugnacious cleric like Philadelphia's Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, who has not hesitated to call out Catholic politicians who dissent from church teachings on abortion.

Juliet Cariaga

She was named, along with Alexandria Karlsen as one of several women connected with Philadelphia businessman Andrew Yao, who was convicted of bankruptcy fraud, and later plead guilty to ten counts of fraud and money laundering for lying about and concealing gambling expenditures and extravagant gifts to former Playboy and Penthouse models.

Kensington Renewal Initiative

The Kensington Renewal Initiative (KRI) is a Philadelphia-based advocacy and community development organization founded by film director, Jamie Moffett.

Lamont Pearson

After four wins he was held to a draw in 1999 when he fought Philadelphia lightweight Anthony Washington (also 4-0 and an experienced amateur) in a six-round bout on an ESPN2 Friday Night Fights but received glowing remarks from ESPN boxing analyst Teddy Atlas, who scored the fight for Pearson 57-56.

Lewis Riggs

He also attended medical lectures given by Dr. Benjamin Rush at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1812.

Lubin Manufacturing Company

Aided by French-born writer and poet Hugh Antoine d'Arcy, who served as the studio's publicity manager, in 1910 Siegmund Lubin built a state of the art studio on the corner of Indiana avenue and Twentieth Street in Philadelphia that became known as "Lubinville."

Mary Willing Byrd

Her father, Charles Willing, was the mayor of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1748 to 1754, and her great-grandfather, Edward Shippen, was the second mayor of Philadelphia from 1701 to 1703.

Panic of 1796–97

The largest such scheme was created by the Boston merchant James Greenleaf and Philadelphia financiers Robert Morris and John Nicholson.

Philadelphia crime family

On October 22, 1946, Dovi died of natural causes at a New York City hospital, and Joseph "Joe" Ida was appointed by the Commission to run the Philadelphia family and its rackets.

Rick Shiomi

As a stage director, Shiomi has directed at the Asian American Theater Company in San Francisco, InterAct Theatre in Philadelphia, The Bloomington Civic Theatre in Minnesota, St. Paul's SteppingStone Theatre for Youth, and has helmed numerous productions for Mu Performing Arts, including two by David Henry Hwang, the play Yellow Face and Hwang's revisal of Flower Drum Song by Rogers and Hammerstein.

Robert Ball Hughes

After a short stay in New York, and then Philadelphia, he settled in Boston, where he produced busts of Washington Irving (1836) and Edward Livingston, and a large bronze of mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch for Mount Auburn Cemetery (1847).

Romaine Fielding

Born William Grant Blandin in Riceville, Iowa, he worked and acted in live theatre for a number of years until 1911 when he turned to acting, writing and directing silent films for Philadelphia-based Lubin Studios.

Ronald G. Beckett

Following the initial work in the Cardiopulmonary Sciences laboratory, Beckett began to apply endoscopy in concert with radiography on the Max Uhle collection of mummies from Pachacamac Peru at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Sarracenia rosea

Wherry sent specimens to Louis Burk, a Philadelphia horticulturalist, who confirmed Wherry's field observations in greenhouse-grown plants.

SEPTA Route 15

After entering Francisville, Route 15 loops partially around the south side of Girard College, but rejoins Girard Avenue again, and passes by St. Joseph's Hospital.

Solar compass

The instrument was then submitted to a committee at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

Stephen Winchester Dana

He was pastor of a Presbyterian church in Belvidere, New Jersey, from November, 1866, till July, 1868, when he was called to the Walnut street church in West Philadelphia, which grew steadily under his pastoral care and earnest preaching.

The Best of The Davis Sisters

The Best of the Davis Sisters is a double LP/single CD album by the famous Philadelphia gospel group, released in 1978 on LP (see 1978 in music) and in 2001 on CD (see 2001 in music).

The Blum Store

The store was comparable in quality, style, and reputation to larger chains Bonwit Teller and Lord & Taylor and was one of the premier chains headquartered in Philadelphia, selling women's clothing and accessories and children's clothing.

The Gallery at Market East

The downtown Philadelphia Greyhound bus terminal is immediately to the north, at 10th and Filbert Streets.

The Shubert Organization

The company was reorganized in 1973, and as of 2008 owned or operated seventeen Broadway theaters in New York City, an off-Broadway theater — the Little Shubert — and the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia.

Theophilus P. Chandler, Jr.

Under the aegis of noted landscape architect Robert Morris Copeland, he relocated to Philadelphia in 1872, to work on development of the planned community of Ridley Park, Pennsylvania.

Walter Rand Transportation Center

Northbound service is available to the Trenton Transit Center with connections to New Jersey Transit Northeast Corridor Line, SEPTA trains to Philadelphia, and Amtrak trains.

Westmount High School

Jeffrey Khaner, Principal Flutist, Philadelphia Orchestra, Flute Professor Juilliard School and Curtis Institute

William Byrd III

Byrd III eventually fathered five children by his first wife (Eliza Carter, m. 1748, d. 1760), and fathered ten more by his second wife, Mary Willing, daughter of Charles Willing of Philadelphia.

William Milnor

He engaged in mercantile pursuits in Philadelphia, and was elected as a Federalist to the Tenth and Eleventh Congresses.