The Fifties

Steve Crane was an actor turned restaurateur. After opening the highly successful Luau restaurant in Beverly Hills in the late 1940s, he started the Kon Tiki chain in 1958. Most of these were located inside Sheraton hotels.

The Flyers played in the American Hockey Association from 1928 to 1942 before moving to the American Hockey League where the played for the 1944-45 season and again during the 1952-53 season.

Bobo was a popular western lowland gorilla who lived at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo from 1953 until he passed away in 1968.

The Blues were Kansas City's AAA minor league baseball team from 1902 to 1954. They played in the American Association and were charter members of that circuit. In 1954, when the A's moved to town from Philadelphia, the Blues moved to Denver and became...

Boston's third pro football team, after the Braves/Redskins (1933-1936) and Yanks (1944-1948), were founded in 1959 as charter members of the new AFL. In 1970, the team changed it's geographical name to Bay State, before switching to New England a few months later, the...

The Indianapolis Olympians were formed in 1949, the same year the combined Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League became the National Basketball Association or NBA. They folded in 1953. Pro basketball would not return to the city until 1967 when the...

The Toledo Mercurys played in the International Hockey League (IHL) from 1947 until 1962. It was the league's first franchise outside of the Detroit Metro area. The team won the league championship, the Turner Cup, in its first season. They won again in 1951...

The Enchanted Forest in Ellicott City opened on August 15, 1955, just one month after Walt Disney opened his theme park in Anaheim, California. The park closed in 1995 with many of its rides and other elements being moved to a nearby farm for...

Dow Breweries was a brewery based in the province of Quebec, Canada and was founded by William Dow. The Dow Brewery eventually came under the control of National Breweries of Quebec in the 1920s, which itself was bought out in 1952 by Canadian Breweries. After...

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.

The Buffalo Blues played in the short-lived Federal League in 1914 and 1915. Despite many attempts, including the formation of another rebel baseball circuit, the Continental League in the late 1950s, big league baseball has never returned to Buffalo. In 2020, Toronto's baseball team...

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) and played12 seasons starting in 1943 and ending in 1954. The Grand Rapids Chicks played from 1945 until the league folded, winning titles in 1947 and 1953. The AAAGPBL was founded by MLB executives Phillip Wigley, Branch...

The Portland Eagles played in the Pacific Coast Hockey League from 1944 until 1951.

Druther's Restaurant was a fast food chain in Louisville that began as Burger Queen??in 1963, with its roots going back to 1956 in Winter Haven, FL. The name change came in 1981 to better reflect the restaurant's offerings which came to include chicken and...

The Nashville Elite Giants were a Negro league baseball team that played from 1920 to 1950, both independently and as part of several different leagues. The team called several cities home over the years, including Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, and Washington. The played in Nashville...

If you wore a store-bought Halloween costume between 1950 and the late 1980s, there's a good chance it was made by Ben Cooper, Inc. Consisting of an inexpensive vinyl smock and plastic mask to recreate various pop culture icons, the costumes were a staple...

Sandy's was a hamburger chain founded in Peoria, Illinois in 1956 by four businessmen who originally planned to open a McDonald's franchise. After a disagreement with McDonald's head Ray Kroc, the four men struck out on their own, naming their burger joint Sandy's. The...

Memorial Stadium in Baltimore was an iconic sports venue that hosted a number of baseball, soccer, and football teams, and held many great memories for the town's sports fans. It's most notable tenants were the original Baltimore Colts football team and the one that...

Big Town Mall opened in 1959 in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite and was the first enclosed shopping center in the Southwest. The center's exterior was featured in the 1985 film??True Stories by Talking Heads member David Byrne. The mall closed in 2001 and...

Detroit's pro basketball team was established in Fort Wayne in 1937 as a semi-pro squad called the Zollner Pistons. Fred Zollner, a manufacturer of pistons, owned the team. They turned pro in 1941 and joined the National Basketball League (NBL). In 1957, the team...

The Indianapolis Chiefs hockey team played in the IHL from 1955 to 1962 at the Indiana State Fair Coliseum. They won the Turner Cup in 1958, despite having a losing record.

Jerry's was founded in Lexington in 1946, quickly becoming a Kentucky favorite. In 1957, the restaurant began franchising. In 1990, the chain was acquired by Denny's who converted most locations to that nameplate while renaming about a dozen locations Jerry's J-Boy, after it's signature...

The Tiny Hut tiki bar was a restaurant located in Walnut Hills, California. It was in operation in the 1940s and 1950s.

The Indianapolis Clowns a professional baseball team in the Negro American League. They came to Indianapolis in 1946 after stints in Cincinnati, Miami, and as a barnstorming team. They left the Negro American League in 1954 but continued to play exhibition games into the...

The first team to be called the Charleston Senators played its first game in 1910. They lasted until 1916. In 1931, a new Senators team debuted, took a few seasons off during World War II, and returned in 1949. They played for four more...

The Atlanta Black Crackers, originally called the Atlanta Cubs, were a Negro League baseball team that played from 1919 to 1952. They played as both an independent club as well as in various Negro leagues throughout their history. Their home field was Ponce de...

Municipal Stadium in Kansas City opened in 1923 as??Muehlebach Field. In 1937 it became??Ruppert Stadium, before changing its name again in 1943 to Blues stadium in honor of the AAA Blues that played there. However, another, better known team played there starting in 1937:...

Playland Amusement Park opened in 1930 on Bitter Lake. A popular entertainment spot into the 1950s, it featured a roller coaster, Shute the Shoots, and roller rink among other attractions. It closed in 1961, the land acquired to build a school.

The Boy Blue chain of soft-serve stands was a Milwaukee institution for many years, from the 1950's until the 1990's.

Rich's was a department store chain headquartered in Atlanta. It opened in 1867 and was absorbed by Federated Department Stores, operators of Macy's, in 2005. One of it's long-standing holiday traditions was the Pink Pig, child-sized monorail. introduced in??1956 as The Snowball Express, its...