Facts & Trivia

 Did you know. . .

• Ithaca takes its name from the Greek island of Ithaca in Homer's Odyssey.
• Cayuga Lake is named after the Cayuga Indian Nation, one of the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy.
• The city's modern history began in the late 18^th Century when Congress awarded Revolutionary War soldiers land grants (in lieu of combat pay) to settle the area. Local deeds are still based on the original "Military Tract," designated in 1790.
• As a frontier town with questionable morals, Ithaca was briefly known as Sodom.
• Famous Ithacans include: "Roots" author Alex Haley, astronomer Carl Sagan, television writer Rod Serling, and former World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz.
• An intrepid boater can cast off from Ithaca and cruise the storied Erie Canal system all the way to NYC and the Atlantic Ocean. Westbound, the canal leads boaters into the Great Lakes, the Mississippi and ultimately to the Gulf of Mexico.
• The Moosewood Restaurant, famous for its award-winning vegetarian cookbooks, has been an Ithaca landmark since 1973.Ithaca was a film capital from 1910-1920 with numerous silent films produced at Wharton Studios in Stewart Park. 
• Ithaca has its own currency, "Ithaca Hours." This alternative legal tender is widely used in town and has been featured in over 400 media outlets nationally and abroad.
• The Ithaca Gun Company, whose namesake smokestack remains a local landmark, was established in 1880 and produced some of the world's finest shotguns. Among its patrons were John Philip Sousa and Annie Oakley. The long-closed factory is now being converted to residential use.

Famous/Infamous Ithaca Discoveries and Creations

• The Ice Cream Sundae-Created by a local fountain owner Chester Platt and Unitarian reverend John Scott on April 3, 1892.
• Chicken Nuggets-Invented by Cornell food scientist Bob Baker in the 1950s.
• The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker-Rediscovered (maybe) by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in 2005.
• The song "Puff the Magic Dragon" was penned in Ithaca. Cornell Student Lenny Lipton wrote it as a poem and passed it on to Peter Yarrow, who later turned it in the Peter, Paul and Marry classic.
• Novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote "Lolita" in Ithaca-and he almost burned it here after the story was rejected by every American publisher. His wife changed literary history when she pulled the manuscript from the incinerator behind their rented house on East Seneca St.

 Need more? Just ask. Contact: Bruce@VisitIthaca.com, 607.272.1313.