Topic
History & Culture, page 10
Michigan has stories you won't find anywhere else — shipwrecks that became songs, a sound that started in Detroit, a war fought over Toledo. Pull up a chair for the history and culture of the Great Lakes State.
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Those Glowing Detroit Tiles All Come From One Little 1903 Pottery
Pewabic Pottery, founded in Detroit in 1903, still makes the iridescent tiles found in landmarks from the People Mover to Chicago's Shedd Aquarium.
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What Does "Up North" Actually Mean in Michigan?
'Up North' isn't a direction in Michigan — it's a place and a feeling: cabins, lakes, and pine forests somewhere past the middle of the mitten, with a border no one can quite agree on.
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What Exactly Is a "Coney Dog" — and Why Do Flint and Detroit Argue About It?
A coney is a hot dog under a meaty, beanless sauce — and Detroit (wet and smooth) and Flint (dry and crumbly) have argued about how to make that sauce for a century.
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What Is "Superman" Ice Cream, and What Flavor Is It Supposed to Be?
Superman ice cream is a red-blue-yellow swirl of lemon, Red Pop, and the famously undefinable Blue Moon — invented, the story goes, by Detroit's Stroh's brewery during Prohibition.
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What's a "Yooper"? What's a "Troll"? And Why Do People Point at Their Hand?
A Yooper is from the Upper Peninsula, a Troll lives 'under the bridge' in the Lower, a Fudgie is a tourist — and yes, Michiganders really do use their hand as a map.
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What's the Deal With the 10-Cent Bottle Deposit?
Michigan's dime-a-can bottle deposit, passed by voters in 1976, is tied for the highest in the country — and it once drove return rates near 97%, the best in the nation.
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Why Detroit Hockey Fans Throw a Dead Octopus Onto the Ice
Detroit Red Wings fans throw octopuses onto the ice — a tradition born in 1952 when two fish-market brothers tossed one for the eight playoff wins it then took to win the Stanley Cup.
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Why Do Some Parts of the U.P. Have a Different Time Than the Rest of Michigan?
Most of Michigan runs on Eastern Time, but four counties in the western U.P. that border Wisconsin — Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson, and Menominee — sit on Central Time.
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Why Does Michigan Have So Many Places Named After Foreign Places?
Michigan's map is full of foreign and classical town names — Paris, Moscow, Athens, Rome — left over from an 1800s naming boom, and locals pronounce most of them their own way.
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Why Does the Upper Peninsula Belong to Michigan and Not Wisconsin?
The Upper Peninsula is attached to Wisconsin, not the rest of Michigan — Michigan got it as a consolation prize for losing the Toledo War to Ohio, and the copper and iron beneath it made the deal a steal.
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Why Doesn't Michigan Have the Death Penalty?
Michigan was the first English-speaking government in the world to abolish the death penalty for ordinary crimes, back in 1846 — and it's the only U.S. state with a constitutional ban.
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Why Is Detroit Called the "Motor City" and "Motown"? (And What's a "Big Three"?)
Detroit is the 'Motor City' for building America's cars — and 'Motown' is both that nickname (Motor Town) and the record label Berry Gordy named in its honor.
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Why Is the Lower Peninsula Shaped Like a Mitten — and Is the Whole State Really Two Pieces?
Michigan really is two separate landmasses, joined since 1957 by the five-mile Mackinac Bridge — and the Lower Peninsula's famous mitten shape is pure luck of the glaciers.
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Why Is Vernors Ginger Ale Such a Big Deal in Michigan?
Vernors is Detroit's own golden ginger ale, one of America's oldest soft drinks — beloved enough that Michiganders drink it flat and warm as cold medicine, or float it into a Boston Cooler.
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Wine on the 45th Parallel: Michigan's Cool-Climate Boom
On the 45th parallel near Traverse City, two slender peninsulas have grown into Michigan's serious, Riesling-loving wine country.
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Yes, There's a Town in Michigan Actually Named Hell
Yes, there's a real town in Michigan named Hell — settled in 1838, officially named in 1841, and happy to let you get 'married in Hell' or crowned mayor for a day.
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Your Backyard Grill Was Invented by Henry Ford (Out of Sawdust)
The charcoal briquette became a household product thanks to Henry Ford, who turned U.P. sawmill scrap into Kingsford Charcoal.
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