History · People
Ohio inventions, firsts and achievements
153 things Ohioans invented, did first or built into companies, from the airplane to the cash register, each tied to a town, ZIP code and county, with sources and the disputes stated.
Inventions 31
- Shay geared locomotives built in Lima 1878Lima Machine Works built its first Shay locomotive, designed by Ephraim Shay, in 1878; Shay patented his geared design in 1881. Lima built about 2,770...
- Cash register (Ritty's Incorruptible Cashier) 1879Dayton saloon owner James Ritty and his brother John patented a mechanical cash register in 1879 (Ritty Model I). Ritty sold out to Jacob H. Eckert of...
- Ivory soap 1879Ivory soap was created in 1879 by chemist James Norris Gamble (son of co-founder James Gamble) and named by Harley Procter; the 'It Floats' slogan dat...
- Hall process for aluminum 1886On February 23, 1886 Charles Martin Hall, 22, produced aluminum by passing current through alumina dissolved in cryolite in a woodshed behind his fami...
- Brush's wind turbine for his Cleveland mansion 1888Charles Brush built an early large wind turbine in 1888 that charged batteries to power his Cleveland mansion.
- Buffington-Crozier disappearing gun carriage 1893In 1893 Adelbert Buffington and William Crozier improved the disappearing gun carriage by letting the counterweight pivot slide, which gave a smoother...
- Tapered roller bearing 1898-1901Henry Timken obtained a patent for an improved tapered roller bearing in 1898; his company incorporated in St. Louis in 1899 and moved to Canton in 19...
- Automatic glass bottle machine 1903Michael Owens, working for Edward Libbey in Toledo, founded Owens Bottle Machine Company in 1903; his automatic machines made about 240 bottles a minu...
- Powered, controlled airplane 1903Wilbur and Orville Wright built the 1903 Flyer at their Wright Cycle Company in Dayton; the four flights of December 17, 1903 (longest 852 ft in 59 s)...
- Garrett Morgan's hair-straightening products 1905Garrett Morgan discovered a hair-straightening liquid by accident in 1905 and in 1913 founded the G. A. Morgan Hair Refining Company; earlier he repai...
- Electric upright vacuum cleaner 1908Asthmatic janitor James Murray Spangler built an electric suction sweeper in 1908 from a fan motor, soap box and broom handle; William 'Boss' Hoover a...
- Crisco shortening 1911P&G introduced Crisco in June 1911, the first shortening made entirely of vegetable oil (originally cottonseed), using hydrogenation.
- Electric self-starter for automobiles 1911-1912Kettering and Delco (Dayton Engineering Laboratories, founded 1909) developed a practical electric starter by 1911; Cadillac's Leland ordered 12,000 f...
- Cigar-shaped rubber balloon 1912Wikipedia's Ashland page says local man Harry Ross Gill invented a way to make cigar-shaped balloons in 1912, when balloons had been only round, found...
- Life Savers candy 1912Clarence Crane made ring-shaped mints in 1912, using pharmacy pill-making machinery, as a summer-proof candy; in 1913 he sold the formula to Edward No...
- Safety hood (early gas mask) and Lake Erie tunnel rescue 1914Garrett Morgan patented a flexible hood with air tubes drawing cleaner air from near the floor; he used it in the 1916 Lake Erie tunnel rescue in Clev...
- Kettering Bug aerial torpedo 1918Kettering designed an unmanned 'aerial torpedo' built by the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company; first flight October 2, 1918. It was never used in combat...
- Tetraethyl lead gasoline and Freon refrigerants 1921-1928In December 1921 Thomas Midgley Jr. at General Motors' Dayton Research Laboratories found that tetraethyllead stopped engine knock; in the late 1920s ...
- Three-position traffic signal 1923Garrett Morgan, a Cleveland inventor, patented a manually operated crank signal with semaphore arms whose vertical position stopped traffic in all dir...
- Super Power locomotive A-1 prototype (Lima) 1925Engineer William Woodard's 'Super Power' design, begun with the 1922 NYC 8000 and completed as the A-1 in 1925, used a larger firebox and better draft...
- Fiberglas insulation 1933-1938Games Slayter applied for a glass-wool patent in 1933 at Owens-Illinois in Toledo; in 1938 he became vice-president of research of the new Owens-Corni...
- High-altitude pressure suit for Wiley Post 1934B.F. Goodrich engineer Russell Colley designed a three-layer pressurized flying suit (rubberized bladder and parachute-fabric outer layer, diver-style...
- Tubeless tire 1946-1947B.F. Goodrich is credited with introducing the commercial tubeless tire; engineer Frank Herzegh applied for a patent in 1946 (US 2,587,470, granted 19...
- Sauder knock-down table 1951In 1951 Erie Sauder of Archbold invented a knock-down table that could ship in pieces. Wikipedia describes his company as one of the largest makers of...
- Ericofon, the one-piece telephone 1954The Ericofon put the handset, dial and ringer in one sculpted piece. It was designed in Sweden in the late 1940s by a team including Gosta Thames, Ral...
- Sabin oral polio vaccine 1954-1962Albert Sabin of Cincinnati Children's Hospital developed an oral polio vaccine; after earlier trials, a campaign from April 25 to May 1, 1960 gave it ...
- Play-Doh 1956Noah McVicker of Cincinnati's Kutol Products made a putty for cleaning coal soot off wallpaper; with sales falling, nephew Joe McVicker joined, and nu...
- Easy-open pull-tab can end 1959Ermal Fraze (Dayton Reliable Tool & Manufacturing, founded 1949) invented the pull-tab can opener in 1959 after opening beer cans on a car bumper at a...
- Baby Swiss cheese is developed near Charm 1960sBaby Swiss, a mild Swiss-style cheese with small holes made from whole milk, was developed in the mid-1960s outside Charm, Ohio, by Alfred Guggisberg'...
- Big Muskie, the largest dragline excavator ever built 1969Built by Bucyrus-Erie as a model 4250-W dragline, Big Muskie mined coal in Ohio from 1969 to 1991 for the Central Ohio Coal Company, then part of Amer...
- Heimlich maneuver 1974Henry Heimlich published the abdominal-thrust technique in Emergency Medicine on June 1, 1974.
Firsts 43
- First permanent settlement in the Northwest Territory 1788On April 7, 1788 forty-eight Ohio Company of Associates settlers led by Rufus Putnam landed at the Muskingum-Ohio confluence, founding Marietta, the f...
- Fort Defiance built at the Maumee and Auglaize 1794General Anthony Wayne's army built Fort Defiance in August 1794 where the Auglaize meets the Maumee. It was the base for the campaign that ended in th...
- Ohio becomes the 17th state 1803Ohio entered the Union March 1, 1803, the first state admitted under the Northwest Ordinance and first post-colonial free state.
- Geauga County organized as the second county of the Western Reserve 1806Geauga County was established on March 1, 1806, the second county in the Connecticut Western Reserve. The first settlement came at Burton in 1798, whe...
- Thorla-McKee Well, an early oil well 1814In 1814, Silas Thorla and Robert McKee dug for salt brine near a deer lick in Noble County and found oil. They soaked it up with blankets and sold it ...
- Saint Joseph Church near Somerset, described as the oldest Catholic church in Ohio 1818; present church 1843Saint Joseph Church stands just outside Somerset on State Route 383. Its first log church was dedicated on December 6, 1818, and the present building ...
- Oberlin admits women and Black students 1833-1837Oberlin (founded 1833) admitted Black students from 1835 and women from 1837; George Vashon (1844) was its first Black graduate and Mary Jane Patterso...
- Ohio Women's Rights Convention at Salem 1850In April 1850 Salem hosted the first Women's Rights Convention in Ohio and the first organized on a statewide basis; all officers were women and men c...
- First paid steam-powered fire department 1852-1853After a 1852 fire at his Eagle Ironworks, Miles Greenwood co-invented the first steam fire engine, and on April 1, 1853 Cincinnati created what it cal...
- Haydenville, last company-owned town in Ohio 1852-1960sFounded in 1852 and named for Peter Hayden, Haydenville was described as the last entirely owned company town in Ohio. Workers were paid in scrip good...
- Wilberforce University 1856Wilberforce was founded in 1856 by the Methodist Episcopal Church; in 1863 the AME Church bought it for $10,000, and the university describes itself a...
- First Medal of Honor recipient 1863Jacob Parrott, a member of Andrews' Raiders, who took a locomotive in Georgia in April 1862, was presented the first Medal of Honor on March 25, 1863,...
- Hospital-based ambulance service 1865Commercial Hospital of Cincinnati (now University of Cincinnati Medical Center) is described as running the first known hospital-based ambulance servi...
- First professional baseball team 1869In 1869 the Cincinnati Red Stockings, managed by Harry Wright, became the first openly all-professional team and finished 57-0; their winning streak, ...
- First electric arc street lighting system 1879On April 29, 1879 Charles F. Brush lit Cleveland's Public Square with twelve arc lamps on towers; accounts call it the first outdoor public space in A...
- First concrete street in the United States 1891George Bartholomew paved a test strip of Main Street beside the Logan County Courthouse with Portland-cement concrete in 1891; Court Avenue, paved in ...
- Cedar Point opens its first roller coaster 1892Louis Zistel opened Cedar Point as a bathing beach in 1870. The park's first amusement ride, a water toboggan, opened in 1890 and its first roller coa...
- Brumback Library, called the first county library in the US 1901Opened January 1, 1901, at 215 W. Main St., Van Wert, with money left by businessman John Sanford Brumback. An 1898 Ohio law let the county support th...
- First practical airplane (Flyer III) 1904-1905At Huffman Prairie the Wrights made about 150 flights in 1904-05; on October 5, 1905 Wilbur flew Flyer III for 39 min 23 s (24.2 miles), longer than a...
- Cooperative education at the University of Cincinnati 1906Herman Schneider's co-op program, alternating classroom study and paid work, began at UC in 1906 after trustees approved a one-year trial in 1905; he ...
- Wright Company flying school at Huffman Prairie 1910In 1910 the Wright Company opened a flight school and test operation at Huffman Prairie that trained over a hundred pilots, including Hap Arnold.
- Paulding County Carnegie Library, the first Carnegie library to serve a whole county 1912-1914Built in 1912-1914 at 205 S. Main St., the Paulding County Carnegie Library is described as the first Carnegie library to serve an entire county inste...
- Electric traffic signal at Euclid Ave. and E. 105th 1914In August 1914 the American Traffic Signal Company installed an electric traffic signal, designed by James Hoge, at Euclid Avenue and East 105th Stree...
- Butler Institute of American Art 1919Founded in 1919 by Joseph G. Butler Jr. at 524 Wick Avenue; its McKim, Mead & White building is on the National Register of Historic Places. The museu...
- First planned free-fall parachute jump with manual opening 1919On April 28, 1919 Leslie Irvin jumped from a DH-9 flown by James Floyd Smith at 1,500 ft, opening a backpack parachute by ripcord; Irvin founded his c...
- Ironton Tanks, a leading pro football team outside the NFL 1919-1930The Ironton Tanks played from 1919 to 1930 and won 85 games, lost 19 and tied 14. They were unbeaten in 1922, won the state title in 1926 and beat the...
- American Professional Football Association founded 1920On September 17, 1920 Ralph Hay, owner of the Canton Bulldogs, convened ten teams at his Canton auto showroom, forming the league that became the NFL....
- First woman elected sheriff in Ohio 1926Maude Collins was appointed Vinton County sheriff in 1925 after her husband's death and was elected in her own right in 1926. Wikipedia and the Ohio m...
- Soap Box Derby 1933-1936Myron Scott of the Dayton Daily News started the soap-box races in Dayton in 1933; the first All-American Derby was August 19, 1934, the finals moved ...
- Alcoholics Anonymous founded 1935AA dates its inception to June 10, 1935, when Akron surgeon Dr. Bob Smith took his last drink after meeting Bill Wilson; the two worked at Akron City ...
- First major-league night game 1935On May 24, 1935 the Reds beat the Phillies 2-1 in the first major-league night game, at Crosley Field (Findlay St. and Western Ave., Queensgate); Pres...
- Larry Doby breaks the American League color barrier 1947Larry Doby signed with the Cleveland Indians on July 5, 1947, eleven weeks after Jackie Robinson; in 1948 he hit the first home run by a Black player ...
- Popularizing the term 'rock and roll' 1951-1952Alan Freed began 'The Moondog House' on Cleveland's WJW on July 11, 1951, popularizing the phrase 'rock and roll', and organized the Moondog Coronatio...
- Coronary angiography 1958On October 30, 1958 F. Mason Sones at the Cleveland Clinic accidentally injected contrast dye directly into a patient's right coronary artery; the pat...
- First American to orbit Earth 1962On February 20, 1962 John Glenn completed three orbits in Friendship 7, the first American to orbit Earth. He was born in Cambridge, Ohio (Guernsey Co...
- Piqua Nuclear Power Facility 1963A 45.5-megawatt (thermal) organic-cooled and moderated reactor that supplied power to the city of Piqua from 1963 to 1966. Atomics International desig...
- First woman to fly solo around the world 1964Jerrie Mock, born in Newark, Ohio and living in Columbus, flew her Cessna 180 'Spirit of Columbus' about 22,860 miles from March 19 to April 17, 1964,...
- Coronary artery bypass grafting 1967René Favaloro, trained at the Cleveland Clinic under Sones, put saphenous-vein coronary bypass into practice in May 1967 and standardized the techniqu...
- First Black mayor of a major U.S. city 1967Carl Stokes won the 1967 Cleveland mayoral election (defeating Seth Taft) and served 1968-1971, among the first Black mayors of a major American city.
- First person on the Moon 1969Neil Armstrong, born August 5, 1930 in Washington Township (near Wapakoneta, Auglaize County), became the first person to walk on the Moon on July 20,...
- OCLC shared cataloging 1971OCLC was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center under Frederick Kilgour; the first online shared cataloging was done at Ohio University's ...
- First woman admiral in the US Navy 1972Navy Nurse Corps director Alene Duerk, born in Defiance, was promoted to rear admiral in 1972, the first woman to hold an admiral's rank in the Navy.
- CompuServe consumer online service 1979Compu-Serv Network began in Columbus in 1969 as a business time-sharing service; in 1979, with Radio Shack's MicroNET, it opened to home users. It was...
Company innovations 45
- Pomeroy coal and salt industries 1819-1848Coal mining at Pomeroy began in 1819, and by the 1830s Samuel Wyllys Pomeroy's company had developed mines and drawn European immigrants. Salt was fou...
- Procter & Gamble founded 1837Candlemaker William Procter and soapmaker James Gamble formed P&G on October 31, 1837; Union Army contracts spread the brand nationally and later prod...
- Buckeye Furnace in the Hanging Rock Iron Region 1852Buckeye Furnace made iron from 1852 to 1894 as part of the Hanging Rock Iron Region, which helped Ohio supply iron to the Union during the Civil War. ...
- Hope Furnace iron works 1854-1874Built in 1854 and operated until 1874, Hope Furnace smelted iron ore using coal or charcoal and anchored a temporary community of about 300 people. Th...
- Sherwin-Williams ready-mixed paint 1866-1875Henry Sherwin entered the paint trade in Cleveland in 1866; Sherwin, Williams & Co. formed in 1870, and in 1875 the company began selling ready-mixed ...
- Scotts weed-free seed and the start of the consumer lawn industry 1868Civil War veteran Orlando McLean Scott opened a hardware store in Marysville in 1868 and began selling weed-free seed to local farmers. His son Dwight...
- A.I. Root Company and Gleanings in Bee Culture 1869Amos Root founded a Medina company in 1869 to make beekeeping equipment and published Gleanings in Bee Culture and the ABC of Bee Culture (1879), stil...
- B.F. Goodrich Company founded in Akron 1870Dr. Benjamin Franklin Goodrich moved his rubber business from Hudson, N.Y. to Akron in 1870, making rubber hose (mostly fire hose); by 1896 it was the...
- Standard Oil Company 1870Standard Oil Company was incorporated in Cleveland on January 10, 1870 by John D. and William Rockefeller, Henry Flagler, Samuel Andrews and Stephen H...
- Akron becomes the Rubber Capital 1870-1915B.F. Goodrich (Akron, 1870), Goodyear (1898), Firestone (August 3, 1900) and General Tire (1915) made Akron the 'Rubber Capital of the World'.
- Rookwood Pottery 1880Maria Longworth Nichols Storer founded Rookwood in 1880, named for her father's Walnut Hills estate; it developed Standard, Iris and Vellum (1904) gla...
- Kroger grocery chain 1883Bernard Kroger opened his Cincinnati store in 1883 with $372; Kroger says it was the first grocer in the country to set up its own bakeries (in 1901),...
- NCR pioneers modern sales training and corporate welfare 1884-1893After taking over NCR in 1884 Patterson created 'Sugar Camp' sales training, a commission-based sales force using scripts from the 'N.C.R. Primer' (re...
- Fostoria Glass Company is founded in Fostoria 1887Lucian B. Martin and William S. Brady founded Fostoria Glass in December 1887 to use newly found natural gas as fuel. The gas ran short and the compan...
- Kenton Hardware Company: locks, cast-iron toys and cap guns 1890-1952From 1890 to 1952 the Kenton Hardware Company made locks, cast-iron toys and, late on, Gene Autry toy cap guns.
- Lincoln Electric welding innovations 1895-1934John C. Lincoln founded Lincoln Electric in 1895 with $200; arc welding was introduced around 1910. Under James F. Lincoln (manager from 1914) came an...
- Columbus Washboard Company, last US washboard maker 1895; Logan since 1999Founded in 1895 near Columbus, the company moved to 4 E. Main Street in Logan in 1999. Its own history says it is the only washboard maker still opera...
- J. M. Smucker Company 1897Jerome Monroe Smucker began selling apple butter in Orrville in 1897; the company incorporated in 1921 and added preserves and jellies.
- Goodyear Tire & Rubber founded in Akron 1898Frank Seiberling founded Goodyear in 1898; early products were bicycle and carriage tires, rubber horseshoe pads and poker chips before automobile tir...
- Packard automobiles begin in Warren 1899Brothers James Ward and William Doud Packard, with George L. Weiss, built the first Packards in Warren in 1899; about 400 cars were made there before ...
- Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company 1900Youngstown Sheet and Tube was one of the largest regional steel producers; Campbell was its secretary in 1900 and president by 1904. Its Campbell Work...
- Firestone supplies Ford; straight-side tire 1900-1906Harvey Firestone founded the company on August 3, 1900 (first products: solid rubber tires for fire apparatus); in 1906 Henry Ford chose Firestone to ...
- Cambridge Glass Company 1902The Cambridge Glass Company made its first piece, a three-pint pitcher, in May 1902. It became known for its Near Cut line, colored glass such as Carm...
- Champion Spark Plug Company, Toledo 1905-1910Albert Champion started the Albert Champion Company in Boston in June 1905, and by 1907 it was making porcelain spark plugs stamped Champion, with the...
- Dayton Engineering Laboratories (Delco) founded 1909Kettering and Edward Deeds founded Dayton Engineering Laboratories in 1909; it developed the electric starter and was sold to General Motors in 1918.
- First U.S. factory built specifically for airplanes 1910-1911The Wright Company (formed November 22, 1909) built its Dayton factory in 1910-11 to a design by William Earl Russ; about 120 aircraft were built 1910...
- Cooper Tire and Rubber Company 1914Cooper began in 1914 in Akron as M and M Manufacturing, making tire patches, cement and repair kits. It moved to Findlay in 1922 after buying the Gian...
- Cleveland Clinic founded 1921Physicians George W. Crile, Frank E. Bunts, William E. Lower and John Phillips founded the Cleveland Clinic in 1921, now a nonprofit academic medical ...
- First Goodyear blimp 1925Goodyear's first blimp flew in 1925; the company later built Navy airships in the Akron Airdock.
- Goodyear blimps and airship dock 1925-1960The Goodyear Airdock (built April-November 1929, 1,175 ft long, once the largest building in the world without interior supports) built the Navy airsh...
- Grimes Manufacturing makes aircraft lighting in Urbana 1930sWarren Grimes designed red, green and white navigation lights for aircraft wing tips and tails, and in the 1930s moved to Urbana and founded Grimes Ma...
- Hobart welded steel houses 1932From 1932 to 1941 the Hobart Welded Steel House Company built 22 prefabricated all-steel houses in Troy. Sixteen of them, with three garages and a she...
- Campbell's V8 production begins in Napoleon 1938V8 vegetable juice has been made at the Napoleon plant since 1938; a soup canning plant was added in 1957. A 33-foot-wide, 33-foot-tall tomato soup ca...
- Willys MB Jeep production 1941-1945Willys-Overland of Toledo won the 1941 Army contract with a more powerful engine and built about 359,000 Willys MBs (Ford built about 278,000 GPWs to ...
- Battelle develops xerography 1944Chester Carlson made the first xerographic copy on October 22, 1938 in Astoria, Queens; Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus took up development in...
- Paul Brown's football innovations 1946Paul Brown, who founded the Cleveland Browns in 1946, is credited with systematic film study, playbooks and testing, a full-time coaching staff, the t...
- Tide detergent 1946Tide debuted in 1946 as the first heavy-duty detergent; chemist David Byerly's work with sodium tripolyphosphate made it work in hard water. ACS named...
- Bob Evans Farms, from a Gallipolis sausage farm to a national chain 1948Bob Evans began making sausage on a southeastern Ohio farm in 1948 and opened a diner in Gallipolis. The company was incorporated in 1953, opened its ...
- Spangler Candy begins making Dum Dums in Bryan 1953Dum Dums were invented in 1924 by another maker. Bryan's Spangler Candy, founded in 1906, bought the rights and equipment from Akron Candy Co. in 1953...
- Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant, Piketon 1954Groundbreaking was November 18, 1952; operations began in 1954 and the plant was fully online in early 1956. It enriched uranium, first highly enriche...
- Etch A Sketch 1960Ohio Art of Bryan introduced André Cassagnes' drawing toy in the U.S. in 1960 at $2.99, selling 600,000 the first year; production moved to China arou...
- Pampers 1961In 1961 P&G researcher Victor Mills, tired of changing cloth diapers on his grandchild, had the Exploratory Division in the Miami Valley develop a dis...
- Wendy's 1969Dave Thomas opened the first Wendy's on November 15, 1969 in Columbus; it closed in 2007.
- Airborne Express builds an air-freight hub at Wilmington 1980A former Air Force base became Wilmington Industrial Air Park. After Airborne Freight formed Airborne Express in 1980, it became the park's largest te...
- Great Lakes Brewing Company 1988Brothers Patrick and Daniel Conway founded Great Lakes Brewing in 1988 at 2516 Market Ave. in Ohio City, Cleveland, described as the first brewpub and...
Achievements 34
- Newark Octagon lunar alignment 100 BCE-400 CEThe Hopewell-built Newark Octagon Earthworks (Newark/Heath, Licking County) align with the northernmost rising of the Moon in its 18.6-year cycle. Mou...
- Fort Recovery holds against the Western Confederacy 1794On June 30-July 1, 1794, about 250 Americans in Fort Recovery held off roughly 1,200 warriors of the Western Confederacy. The fort's survival let Anth...
- Fort Meigs holds against a British siege 1813From April 28 to May 9, 1813, American forces under William Henry Harrison held Fort Meigs against British and Native forces led by Henry Procter and ...
- Ohio and Erie Canal 1825-1832Ground was broken July 4, 1825 at Licking Summit near Newark; the 308-mile canal with 146 locks linked Lake Erie and the Ohio River, with the first bo...
- McGuffey Eclectic Readers 1836-1837Cincinnati publisher Truman and Smith commissioned William Holmes McGuffey (Miami University, Oxford) to write graded readers; the first four appeared...
- Grand Lake St. Marys built as a canal reservoir 1837-1845Grand Lake St. Marys was built from 1837 to 1845 as a reservoir feeding the Miami and Erie Canal, much of it dug by hand by about 1,700 workers, mostl...
- The Counterfeit House on Gift Ridge 1840Local accounts say a house near Manchester was built in 1840 by an engraver named Oliver Tompkins to counterfeit 50-cent pieces and $500 bills, with t...
- Utopia, a Fourierist settlement that became an anarchist colony 1844Followers of Charles Fourier founded Utopia in 1844 on the Ohio River in far southern Franklin Township, Clermont County, after the failure of the Cle...
- Randolph freedpeople settle in Shelby and Miami counties 1846In 1846, 383 people freed by John Randolph of Roanoke's will traveled from Virginia to Ohio by wagon, steamboat and canal boat. Armed settlers at New ...
- Oberlin-Wellington Rescue 1858On September 13, 1858 abolitionists from Oberlin rescued fugitive John Price from a U.S. marshal in Wellington; of 37 indicted, Simeon Bushnell and Ch...
- John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge 1866-1867The Roebling bridge between Cincinnati and Covington opened to traffic on January 1, 1867 as the longest suspension bridge in the world (1,057 ft main...
- Ohio State University founded 1870Founded March 22, 1870 as the Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College; renamed The Ohio State University in 1878.
- Wilmington College opens, a Quaker college in Clinton County 1870Quakers bought the half-built Franklin College building and 33 acres in 1870 and opened Wilmington College. Its first class of four graduated in 1875,...
- Annie Oakley sharpshooting 1875-1885Phoebe Ann Mosey, born August 13, 1860 in Darke County, beat marksman Frank Butler near Greenville as a teen, married him, and joined Buffalo Bill's W...
- Cleveland Arcade 1890The Arcade at 401 Euclid Avenue opened May 30, 1890; designed by John Eisenmann and George H. Smith, it is one of the earliest indoor shopping arcades...
- Woodsfield-area oil boom 1891-1901After the Sistersville oil field in West Virginia was found to reach into Monroe County in 1891, about 300 wells near Woodsfield were producing 55,000...
- Root's eyewitness account of the Wright brothers' first circle flight 1904On September 20, 1904, Amos Root watched Wilbur Wright fly the first complete circle in an airplane at Huffman Prairie; Wright mechanic Charles Taylor...
- Cleveland Association of Colored Men 1908Garrett Morgan was among the officers of the Cleveland Association of Colored Men, organized in June 1908 by Black business and professional men to im...
- Martha, the last passenger pigeon, dies at the Cincinnati Zoo 1914Martha, the last known passenger pigeon, died at the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1, 1914 and was sent to the Smithsonian; she became a symbol of extin...
- Miami Conservancy District flood protection 1915-1922After the March 1913 Great Dayton Flood the Miami Conservancy District was organized in 1915 under engineer Arthur E. Morgan; five dry dams (Englewood...
- Cleveland Call newspaper founded 1920The Cleveland Call began about 1920 with a group that included inventor Garrett Morgan; in 1927 it merged with the Cleveland Post to form the Call and...
- Cincinnati Union Terminal 1933Opened March 19, 1933 at 1301 Western Ave., the Fellheimer & Wagner Art Deco terminal has the largest semi-dome in the Western Hemisphere and Winold R...
- Four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics 1936Jesse Owens, a student at East Technical High School in Cleveland and Ohio State, won four gold medals (100 m, 200 m, long jump, 4x100 m relay) at the...
- Dayton Project and Mound Laboratory (Manhattan Project polonium) 1943-1949The secret Dayton Project (1943-1949, led by Monsanto's Charles Allen Thomas) produced polonium for neutron initiators in the atomic bombs; permanent ...
- Orleton Farms mastodon 1949In November 1949 workers laying drain tile at Orleton Farms in Madison County found a mastodon skeleton with many bones.
- Willem Kolff at the Cleveland Clinic 1950-1960sDutch physician Willem Kolff, who built the first working artificial kidney in the Netherlands (1943-45), joined the Cleveland Clinic in 1950 and work...
- Bevo Francis scores 113 points in one college game 1954In the 1953-54 season, Bevo Francis of tiny Rio Grande College scored 113 points against Hillsdale College. It stood as the college single-game scorin...
- Studio glass takes hold: Dominick Labino's 1962 workshop and Grand Rapids studio 1962In 1962 Dominick Labino and Harvey Littleton led a glassblowing workshop at the Toledo Museum of Art. In 1963 Labino opened his own studio on a farm n...
- Pro Football Hall of Fame 1963The Hall opened September 7, 1963 at 2121 George Halas Dr. NW, Canton; Canton won it for the NFL's 1920 founding there, the Bulldogs' titles and nearl...
- Cuyahoga River fire and the Clean Water Act 1969The Cuyahoga caught fire on June 22, 1969; the river had burned more than ten times over the previous century, and Time's coverage used a photo of the...
- Nobel Prize in Literature 1993Toni Morrison, born Chloe Wofford in Lorain on February 18, 1931, won the 1988 Pulitzer for Beloved and the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first ...
- Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 1995The museum, designed by I. M. Pei, opened September 1, 1995 on Cleveland's lakefront after Cleveland was chosen in 1986; the foundation dates from Apr...
- Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks UNESCO World Heritage Site 2023Eight Hopewell earthwork complexes in southern Ohio, built about 1-400 CE, were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site on September 19, 2023 (the 2...
- Great Serpent Mound c. 300 BCE or c. 1070 CEThe 1,348-ft effigy mound in Adams County is the largest known serpent effigy; a 2014 radiocarbon study suggested Adena builders about 300 BCE, but Br...