Cincinnati

Federal Records was founded in 1950 as a subsidiary of??King Records. It was home to, among others, the Dominoes and Johnny "Guitar" Watson. The most famous act on its roster, though, was the "Godfather of Soul" himself, James Brown.

Riverfront Stadium, later Cinergy Field, was the home of the Cincinnati Reds (and Bengals) from 1970 until 2002. The Reds captured three World Series titles (1975, 1976, and 1990) while playing there. The Bengals won the AFC Championship there in 1981 in a game...

Founded in 1912 as Standard Oil of New Jersey after the breakup of the larger Standard Oil corporation, Esso gas stations were found all over the Northeastern United States and parts of the South starting in the 1930s. In 1972, most were re-branded Exxon....

An ode to the three "Little Kings" of original cream ale.

The Hudepohl Brewing Company was established in Cincinnati in 1885 by Ludwig Hudepohl II, the son of Bavarian immigrants. In 1986, Schoenling Brewing Company, makers of??Little Kings, acquired Hudepohl, forming the Hudepohl-Schoenling Brewing Company. After being purchased by a Cleveland-based company in the late...

Woodsy Owl first appeared in 1971 and asked Americans to take better care of the environment by disposing of trash properly. An??updated version??of Woodsy was developed in the 1990s.

If you grew up in Cincinnati, chances are pretty good you were on the??Uncle Al Show. Uncle Al and Captain Wendy entertained children of the Midwest for over 35 years, and had one of the longest running kids TV shows in the history of...

"The World's Most Famous Clown," as he is sometimes called, got his start in 1946. He made is TV debut in 1949, just as that medium was getting started. He??was the creation of created by Alan W. Livingston and first played by Pinto Colvig. He was played...

The Arena Football League was founded in 1986 by Jim Foster, who had gotten the idea from watching a Major Indoor Soccer League game earlier in the decade. After two test games in 1986, the league kicked off in 1987 with four teams travelling...

If you didn't have MTV in the early to mid '80s, or even if you did, you were parked in front of the TV to watch??Friday Night Videos??on NBC after??The Tonight Show.

Hot Sam Pretzels was a fast food??franchise that first opened in Detroit's Livonia Mall in 1966. With franchised locations also found mostly in shopping malls, it was bought by Mrs. Fields, off of cookies, in 1995 and merged with Pretzel Time. Hot Sam is...

Before the Cincinnati??Swords,??Stingers, Cyclones, and??Mighty Ducks, Cincinnati had the Mohawks. They were a member of the American Hockey League (AHL) from 1949 to 1952, before moving to the International Hockey League (IHL), where they won 5 straight championships. Their home ice was the??Cincinnati Gardens.

Media Play was an attempt by The Musicland Group to compete with so-called big box retailers such as electronics stores Best Buy and Circuit City, who sold CDs at near cost to lure customers in. In addition to music, Media Play also carried books,...

A key part of Cincinnati lore, a local newspaper once described the El Rancho Rankin Hotel as "a two-story embarrassment of neon and a sprawl of giant, improbably-colored fiberglass animals." Built by Colonel Harrison Rankin in 1940, it closed in 1996 and is now...

On November 23, 1973,??The Brady Bunch??episode "The Cincinnati Kid" first aired on ABC-TV. The episode was filmed in August of that year at Kings Island in Mason and remains a favorite of Tristate TV fans.

Crispy golden fries in two minutes was the promise made by MicroMagic, a line of frozen foods that appeared in the late '80s. "Give 'em MicroMagic now," went the jingle.

Encouraged by the initial success of his American Basketball Association (ABA), which challenged the National Basketball Association (NBA), Gary Davidson and his cohorts turned their attention to hockey. On November 1, 1971, Davidson announced the formation of the World Hockey Association (WHA) to challenge...

Steeped in '70s, and a little '80s, nostalgia, the Have a Nice Day Cafe was a chain of restaurants that operated from the mid-90s to the early 2000s. At its peak, the chain had over 20 locations across the U.S.

ON TV was an over-the-air subscription TV service that started broadcasting in 1977. With the use of a set-top descrambler, subscribers could watch movies, sports, and other premium content. By 1985, competition from cable TV forced ON TV and similar services out of business.

In 1976, America's largest fast food chain introduced the character of Phil A. O'Fish to help sell their fish sandwiches. In recent years it has become the opposite of an urban legend with many asserting Phil A. O'Fish never existed. He did, but he...

Looney T Birds opened in Oxford, Ohio, home of Miami Univeristy, in 1984 and was the premier record shop in Oxford for nearly 20 years. It's convenient downtown location and relationship with WOXY helped cement its place in Tristate music history.??

Surf Cincinnati was a water park located in Forest Park, Ohio, just off of I-275 in suburban Cincinnati. It opened in 1990 and competed with the famous Sunlite Pool, The Beach, and Kings Island's new water park. In 2000, a nightclub called??Caddy's??was added after...

Joe Morgan??was an integral part of The Big Red Machine that won the World Series in 1975 and 1976. Morgan had a storied career and and his considered one of the besr second basemen of all time, both on the field and at the...

After the Central Hockey League (CHL) version of the Stingers folded 33 games into the 1979/80 season, Cincinnati was left without a pro hockey team for the first time since 1974, when the American Hockey League's Swords folded. The Tigers hit the ice in...

Bring your bounty back to the Buckeye State.

There's no doubt in our mind,??Johnny Bench??is the greatest catcher of all time. In his career, all of it spent with the Reds, he had??2,048,??a .267 career batting average with 389 homers,??and 1,376 RBIs. He is third on the career homeruns list for catchers,...

The Bat opened in 1981 as the world's first suspended roller coaster. However, frequent mechanical problems forced it to close after the 1983 season. Learning from The Bat's shortcomings, the ride's manufacturer, Arrow Dynamics, was able to develop a much more successful second generation...

Rivermen were members of??North American Softball League (NASL). The NASL existed for only the 1980 season, before joining with the American Professional Slow Pitch League (APSPL) to create the United Professional Softball League. Since the Cincinnati Suds were already in existence in the APSL,...

The Cincinnati Kids were a soccer team that played in the original??Major Indoor Soccer League??during the 1978-79 season. They were partially owned by baseball legend??Pete Rose??and played their home games at??Riverfront Coliseum.??READ MORE

Burger Chef was a fast-food hamburger chain that started in Indianapolis in 1958. At its peak in the mid 1970s, it was second only to McDonald's in the number of nationwide locations. The chain even made inroads into Canada. In 1982, the chain was sold...