5 Cities With Unexpected Claims To Fame

Brush up on road trip trivia with some interesting and unusual facts about these U.S. destinations


Get a 360-degree view of the original 1982 World’s Fair site at the Sunsphere in Knoxville, Tennessee.

 

Most everyone knows about the Wright Brothers’ first flight in North Carolina, Elvis Presley’s Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, and the famous Mississippi River that captured Mark Twain’s imagination. Indeed, we’re on a first-name basis with these and other common-knowledge claims to fame across the U.S. But what about the more obscure ones? Read on for a few lesser-known and unusual facts—and tuck these tidbits away so you can pull them out on your next road trip and impress your travel companions!


Beware the Wigsphere in Knoxville, Tennessee

Knoxville made a memorable appearance on a 1996 episode of The Simpsons. Bart gets a fake license and rents a car (don’t try this at home, kids), which he then takes on a road trip. The destination: Knoxville’s Sunsphere, which they eventually find and discover to be dubbed “Wigsphere” for an outlet store now located within it. If this eminently quotable episode is your only exposure to Knoxville, you should know that the real-life Sunsphere is visible from the interstate. One of two structures still remaining from the 1982 World’s Fair, the 266-foot-tall structure is not actually full of wigs.


Find the end of the road in Wilmington, North Carolina

If you want to take a true cross-country road trip, end your journey in this city on the Cape Fear River. Here, in one of North Carolina’s most popular coastal destinations, Interstate 40 comes to a screeching halt at the end of a peninsula. Point A on this coast-to-coast highway is 2,554 miles down the road in Barstow, California. As Interstate 40 crosses the country from west to east, it passes through major cities like Albuquerque, New Mexico; Oklahoma City; Memphis, Tennessee; and Asheville, North Carolina.


Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee in Louisville, Kentucky


Discover the journey of a champion at the Muhammad Ali Center in Louisville, Kentucky.

Home to the Kentucky Derby, Louisville is more than just a horse racing town. Two larger-than-life, 20th-century cultural icons also hail from Kentucky’s largest city. Cassius Clay, who was born there in January 1942, would later take up boxing, change his name to Muhammad Ali, and proclaim himself “The Greatest.” A world-class cultural center and museum, the Muhammad Ali Center, which opened in 2005, is located on the riverfront in Louisville. Muhammad Ali isn’t the city’s only star. Before gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson wrote Hell’s Angels or the wild, semi-autobiographical Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, he was a Kentuckian, born in Louisville during the summer of 1937.


Discover the city that almost wasn’t in Galveston, Texas


Take a horseback ride along the ocean in Galveston, Texas.

Paradoxically, this Texas town is perhaps most famous for being destroyed. Popular historian and best-selling author Erik Larson wrote about the 1900 hurricane that leveled Galveston in Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History. The underestimated storm was the deadliest in U.S. history, killing more than 6,000 people and obliterating more than 3,600 homes. When you visit, you’re seeing the rebuilt city, which sits 17 feet higher than the old one, all courtesy of the 1900 storm.


Visit the little city with the big Internet in Chattanooga, Tennessee

Thanks to an advanced fiber-optic network, Chattanooga offers its residents some of the fastest Internet in the world—fourth only to the major Asian cities of Seoul, Tokyo and Hong Kong, according to the local paper. Granted, this is more relevant to businesses than to your own surfing needs. (Using Internet of this speed is kind of like driving a Ferrari to the grocery store.) Still, it’s pretty neat!


Ready to travel? Find hotels in Louisville, Knoxville, Wilmington, Galveston, Chattanooga.

 




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