Pittsburgh, USA Central Trivia Quiz

Answer: Southwest near the Ohio border

Pittsburgh is the second biggest city in Pennsylvania with a 2020 population of 302 000 people with nearly 2.5 million in its metropolitan area. It is located in the southwest of the state.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike (part of Interstate 76) connects Pittsburgh with the state capital, Harrisburg, (the fourth largest city in the state) on the Susquehanna River. The state's largest city is Philadelphia which is on the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers.

Erie is the only major Pennsylvania city on Lake Erie. It is 130 miles north of Pittsburgh on I-79 which originates in the south near Charleston, West Virginia.

Interstate 70 is a major east-west Interstate Highway in the US that runs from I-15 in Utah to Baltimore, Maryland in the east. It runs approximately 20 miles south of Pittsburgh and together with I-79 and I-76 forms a triangular-shaped beltway around the city. These highways have auxiliary spurs, I-279, I-579, I-376 connecting to Downtown Pittsburgh.

Answer: The city is located at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River, which form the Ohio River.

Pittsburgh is a city of bridges. With 446 (and there is some debate about this number), it has three bridges more than Venice.

Downtown Pittsburgh is located at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River, which combine to form the Ohio River. The Downtown area is known as the Golden Triangle where the Ohio River forms from the confluence of the other two rivers. The actual convergence is at Point State Park. As such, there was a need for many bridges, especially those that spanned the three rivers to access downtown.

Many of the bridges are painted gold/and or black to reflect the city colours.

Answer: Steep hilly residential areas with flatter areas to the east

The southern, western, and northern neighbourhoods of the city are primarily residential and are steeply sloped mostly with two-lane roads. Of Pittsburgh's 90 neighbourhoods, many have names that include 'Heights" or 'Hills' or similar. Pittsburgh is so steep, that it highlights its 'Steps of Pittsburgh" which are over 810 sets of outdoor public stairways with 44,645 treads and a total height of 24,090 vertical feet.

The photo depicted is not taken from a drone but from Mt Washington, a cliffy neighbourhood overlooking the downtown area. Two funiculars connect the riverbank area to the residential district above.

The eastern part of the city, between the Allegheny and the Monongahela Rivers, is flatter and this is where most of the cultural infrastructure is located including art galleries, restaurants, major medical centres and universities.

Answer: Steelmaking

With 19th-century Pittsburgh residents such as H. J. Heinz, George Westinghouse, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Mellon and Andrew Mellon, it was no wonder Pittsburgh was a mighty industrial city.

However, it was Carnegie Steel, later U.S. Steel, that dominated the city. With close access to plentiful coal and iron mines in the region and the best transport infrastructure of the times with crisscrossing railroads and the Ohio River being a tributary of the Mississippi, Pittsburgh was producing one-third of the United States' steel production by the turn of the 20th century.

However, in the early 1980s, the steel industry in the US collapsed. Half of the nation's steelworkers became unemployed. In the Pittsburgh area, the number of steelworkers dropped from 90,000 in 1980 to 44,000 in four years. Pittsburgh became part of the Rust Belt.

However, Pittsburgh emerged from the financial doldrums much quicker than most other Rust Belt cities. It reinvented itself by becoming a university-driven technology hub, like Austin, Texas; Raleigh, North Carolina; or San Diego (note - none of these other cities were Rust Belt cities). Carnegie Mellon University, one of the best-ranked in the nation, has collaborated with both industry and government to help resuscitate the city. Healthcare-related research has also become a big earner for Pittsburgh version 2.

Pittsburgh's renaissance was also possible because of a thriving arts and cultural scene that traces its roots back to the major US industrialists able to initially fund such activities and infrastructure such as world-class museums, like the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Andy Warhol Museum. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre showcase the city's passion for performing arts. and attract patrons from all over the US.

Answer: First shots of the civil war occurred at Ford Sumter

In 1749, French soldiers sailed from Quebec headed for the head of the Ohio River to unite (French) Canada with French Louisiana via rivers. So in response, the British built Fort Saint George at the Forks to ward them off. They were unsuccessful and so the French built Fort Duquesne based on LaSalle's 1669 claims of the area being French. Edward Braddock, a British General, and Major George Washington were sent to take Fort Duquesne. which took some time. General John Forbes took the Forks in 1758. He built Fort Pitt, while the settlement was named "Pittsborough".

In 1791, the federal government taxed domestically-distilled liquor to help pay for the Revolutionary War. This particularly affected the farmers of western Pennsylvania who regularly made whiskey from the crops they grew. They felt the tax was unfair and did not pay the tax. When troops were sent to collect that tax in 1794, the farmers retaliated with violence.

Camp Dubois (also known as Camp Wood), at Wood River, Illinois, served as the launch point for the Louisiana Purchase exploration by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. However, as reported by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in 2019, the US federal government recognized that Pittsburgh was the starting point for the Lewis and Clark Expedition. This was because Meriwether Lewis bought a flat-bottomed boat that would be used to sail up the Missouri River.

In 1861, Fort Sumter, a federally owned fort, was attacked by confederate rebels. Fort Sumter is in South Carolina and is far from Pittsburgh.

Answer: British statesman and prime minister

William Pitt the Elder was the first Earl of Chatham and the Leader of the House of Commons when Pittsburgh was named after him by General John Forbes, in 1758 (He became Prime Minister in 1766). Forbes was Scottish, so the 'burgh' component is not of German origin and was probably pronounced so it rhymed with Edinburgh.

The flag is a gold vertical triband of black-gold-black, charged in the centre with the arms of the City of Pittsburgh.

The Coat of Arms of Pittsburgh is also based on the arms of the House of Pitt. This design is three gold circles on a black shield and bisected by a blue and white check pattern from the Fraternal Order of Police. Above the shield is the image of a fortress. The Pittsburgh Coat of Arms is further embellished and surrounded by a seal bearing the Earl of Chatham's motto - "Benigno Numine" which is generally translated as "With the Benevolent Deity" or more simply as "By the Favour of the Heavens". Additionally, the seal has the date of adoption, 1816, included in the seal's wording.

As a tribute, all four professional major sporting teams in Pittsburgh have adopted black and gold as their colours. In US sporting circles, this is a unique occurrence.

Answer: University classrooms and administration building

Standing at 535 feet (163 m), this 42-story building is the centrepiece of the University of Pittsburgh's Oakland campus. The Cathedral of Learning (called Cathy by the students) was designed in 1921 and opened in 1931. The first forty floors include lecture theatres, computer and language laboratories, classrooms, food establishments and administrative offices.

The University of Pittsburgh is a world-renowned university. It was here in 1955 that Dr Jonas Salk was able to release the first vaccine against polio. Pittsburgh is the home to many notable tertiary education centres. The most notable, besides U. Pitt, are Carnegie Mellon University and Duquesne University.

Answer: Allegheny General Hospital

Allegheny Health Network has the Allegheny General Hospital as its flagship. It can trace its origins back to 1882 and is known as the AGH. It is located on the North Shore. It was the first hospital in Pennsylvania to be recognised as a Level 1 shock trauma centre. It was also the first hospital east of the Mississippi to operate an aeromedical service.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is a massive health network with over 92,000 employees and over 8000 beds in 40 hospitals. Its main hospital is the UPMC Mercy Trauma and Burns Center east of Downtown. It can trace its roots roots in the 1893 establishment of the Presbyterian Hospital. UPMC has pioneered several world firsts, especially in the transplantation field. Its world-firsts include the first cystic fibrosis heart-lung transplant in 1983 and the world's first heart-liver-kidney transplant in 1989.

The other two hospitals are leading Pennsylvania hospitals in Philadelphia and Lancaster.

Answer: Pickles

In 2019, Pittsburgh was voted "Food City of the Year" by a San Francisco-based restaurant consulting company.

Foods associated with Pittsburgh include two foods originating in Poland, Pierogis (dumplings) and Kielbasa (sausage). Other foodstuffs associated with Pittsburgh include the chipped chopped ham sandwich and the Klondike Bar (a chocolate-covered square of ice cream made in nearby Ohio).

Because Henry Heinz founded the Heinz food empire in Pittsburgh in the 1860s, Pittsburgh has always had a strong connection to food processing, including pickles. Each year (except 2020), there has been a food festival downtown on the Allegheny Riverfront. According to the "TribLIVE", an online Pennsylvania news source, the festival features "all things pickled, including pickle-flavored beer and cocktails, pickle ice cream, and other pickled foods such as dilly beans and kimchi". There is a pickle juice drinking competition, (the winner is crowned the "Mayor of Picklesburgh") and the centrepiece of the festival is a 35-foot (11m) pickle balloon (pictured).

Answer: Indianapolis, Kansas City, Denver

Nearly all the cities listed are major NFL cities, and while they are all west of Pittsburgh, only three are on the I-70.

Heading west out of Pennsylvania on I-70, you will traverse Ohio, Indiana, southern Illinois, Missouri, and Colorado before hitting Utah. The major cities you will visit will be, in order, Columbus, Indianapolis, St Louis, Kansas City, and Denver.
Cincinnati is southwest of Columbus - You would need to take I-71 south out of Columbus, (which does not have an NFL franchise) to reach the home of the Bengals.

The Los Angeles Rams relocated to St Louis for a brief period (where they won a Super Bowl), before relocating back to LA.

To see the Steelers play Cleveland at the Browns (Cleveland), Lions (Detroit) or Bears (Chicago), you would need to head northwest out of Pittsburgh on I-76 until it hits I-80 and then head west, taking a separate interstate to connect with each of these cities.

The picture represents the team colours of the Indianapolis Colts, Kansas City Chiefs and the Denver Broncos, respectively.