I was born in Columbus, Ohio and growing up a Buckeye you learn a few things very quickly:
Number One is that it’s called “pop” not “soda”,
Number Two is that someone took a bite out of our state flag.
And Number Three is that Ohio is first in all things always; even when we’re not.
The weird thing is that its only half-bravado. For instance, as a crazy swing state every time there’s a presidential election, you learn the phrase, “As Ohio goes, so goes the nation” is actually kind of true. Beginning in 1804, over the next 52 presidential elections, Ohio has only given its Electoral votes to the loser of the election a grand total of 9 times (and 7 of those were before 1900). That’s an 86% success rate. The last time the winner of the U.S. Presidential election failed to secure Ohio was back in 1960. To put that into perspective, Eddie Murphy, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Wayne Gretzky, and George Lopez were all born in 1961; which means the entire time they’ve been alive, Ohio has been deciding who is going to be President. This, amongst other things has given Ohio a swelled head, made it pretty full of itself, and has caused some really weird feuds with other States.
Here are four of the most prominent but no less stupid temper tantrums we Ohioans have with our fellow members of the Union (in descending order of intensity and insanity).
#1. Ohio vs. Virginia over who has “birthed” the most Presidents
Ohio is immensely proud of its Presidential election record, but we’re even giddier over the claim that more presidents have called Ohio their home state than any other state…except Virginia, who says the exact same thing.
It all stems over what is technically a “home state”. People are quite often born in one state but then move and grow up in another, causing confusion over where they’re really from because that matters for some reason. For example, outside of the “Virginia vs. Ohio: U.S. President Thing”, we also have a “Virginia vs. Ohio: Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters Thing”.
All-time best person ever Dave Grohl was born in Warren, Ohio and lived there in infancy before his family moved to Springfield, Virginia where he actually grew up to become a Rock-n-Roll God.
Nothing stops this man from rocking!
So, even though the majority of his life, formative years, and place where he learned how to play guitar were all in Virginia; because he popped out of a vagina in Warren, Ohio – that city named a filthy alley after him because “HE’S FROM OHIO, DAMNIT”!
This picture is not photoshopped.
Ohio has the same thing with Virginia over Presidents because not only are Presidents born someplace, they’re also elected from someplace and that someplace is not always the same. Virginia claims seven presidents with four of those being both born and elected from the state (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe) and the other three, (John Tyler, Woodrow Wilson, and William Henry Harrison) having been just born there. Ohio claims eight presidents, with five being both born and elected from the state (Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, William McKinley, Howard Taft, Warren G. Harding), one being elected from (William Henry Harrison), and the other two (Ulysses S. Grant and Benjamin Harrison) having been just born there.
But, William Henry Harrison has a crossover because he was born in Virginia but elected from Ohio – so neither state recognizes the other’s claim to the dude who died 32 days into office. Plus, John Tyler was Harrison’s running mate and became president only after Harrison’s death, so he wasn’t ever technically “elected” because his presidency was such a shit-storm even his own party didn’t re-nominate him for a second term.
Virginia says they technically have given us seven presidents but Ohio really can only legitimately say they have six. On the other hand, Ohio says Virginia can really only claim five presidents while Ohio has eight and also the amazing best guy ever Dave Grohl, so checkmate motherf**kers!
Check and mate
#2. Ohio vs. Alaska over the name of a mountain
The tallest mountain in North America is located in the state of Alaska and (depending on whose side you’re on) is called either Denali or Mount McKinley. The official name of the mountain listed by the United States Board on Geographic Names is Mount McKinley; but, the Alaska Board of Geographic Names calls the mountain Denali. Regardless of any of that, the mountain is the centerpiece of Denali National Park and Preserve which everyone seems to agree is called Denali National Park and Preserve.
The mountain was first called “Bolshaya Gora” by the Russians when they claimed Alaska was their main caribou farm. Bolshaya Gora is Russian for “Big Mountain” because ain’t nobody got time to name things. In 1867, the United States bought Alaska from Russia for 7.2 million dollars and 30 years later in 1896 a gold prospector started calling the mountain Mount McKinley in what was essentially a publicity stunt to support Ohio Governor William McKinley who was running for President and supported the gold standard over the silver standard. McKinley won the election (much to the dismay of Virginia), fought the Spanish-American war, and was assassinated in his second term in 1901.
This is the only picture of him I could find where President McKinley is smiling.
Everyone meanwhile who bothered to care called the mountain McKinley and in 1917 the U.S. Federal Government formally named the mountain after President McKinley and everyone went on their way not giving a shit…except Alaska which when it became a state in 1959 renamed the mountain Denali.
The renaming was met with a shrug and a whatever for the next fifteen years until in 1975 when a request by the Alaska state legislature to the United States Board on Geographic Names to change the name to Denali, (meaning “the great one” in the Athabaskan languages of the Alaska Natives living around the mountain) was blocked by Ohio congressman Ralph Regula, whose district includes McKinley’s hometown of Canton (which is also the site of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, so… TOUCHDOWN).
Representative Ralph Regula is ready for some football.
Over the next 34 years, whenever the Alaska delegation to Congress (which is a total of three people) brought up a name change from McKinley to Denali, Ralph Regula stood up and blocked it with all the fervor of a Defensive Back rushing a Punter (which he learned visiting the Pro Football Hall of Fame in his home district). Congressman Regula devised a new dick move tactic to support the Mount McKinley name. Capitalizing on a Board on Geographic Names policy that states the Board cannot consider any name-change proposal if congressional legislation relating to that name is pending, Regula began a biennial legislative tradition of either introducing language into Interior Department appropriation bills or introducing a standalone bill that states that the name of Mount McKinley shall not be changed. This effectively killed the Denali name-change proposal pending with the Board on Geographic Names.
Congressman Regula (campaign slogan: “I get to name your damn mountain”) retired from congress in 2009, so there seemed to be hope that the crazy name cock-blocking would end, especially since The National Park Service “has no objection to adopting the name of Denali for Mt. McKinley”. So, in January 2015 when Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski once again brought up the name change, Ohio Representative Tim Ryan assumed Regula’s role as congressional guardian of the Mount McKinley name and totally blocked it. And just in case you think this is a partisan issue, Ohio’s dickery on the matter is totally non-partisan because Ralph Regula was a Republican and Congressman Tim Ryan is a Democrat. Several Ohio newspapers sided with Alaska with one going so far as to call it “a rather unseemly effort on behalf of a politician who never set foot near the mountain and had no known interest in it.”
As of the writing of this article (eight months after Senator Murkowski’s proposal), the mountain is still recognized by the Federal Government as being named McKinley. TOUCHDOWN!
#3. Ohio vs. North Carolina over the invention of the airplane
As you sit in the airport wondering why your crappy Southwest flight to Phoenix is 20 minutes past boarding time, you can thank Orville and Wilbur Wright. The Wright brothers were two high school dropouts who owned a bicycle repair shop in Dayton, Ohio. They also invented and built the world’s first successful airplane; making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight. They accomplished this in 1903 but despite having albums full of photographic evidence, eyewitnesses’, and a giant airplane called the Wright Flyer that people could see and touch; no one believed them until 1908. Today the Wright Flyer is housed in the Smithsonian in Washington D.C.
Beverage service on the Wright Flyer totally blew
Orville and Wilbur gained the mechanical skills essential for their airplane success by working for years in their Dayton repair shop with printing presses, bicycles, motors, and other machinery. Their work with bicycles in particular influenced their belief that an unstable vehicle like a flying machine could be controlled and balanced with practice. They watched birds and studied their every movements and discovered the shape of a bird’s wing and its balance was what allowed it to fly without flapping. Up until that point everyone who had tried to build a flying machine (including Leonardo DaVinci) had based their designs on flapping.
Flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap, flap… etc… etc
The Wright Brothers determined that a bird’s flapping was just the method of propulsion and it was the shape of their wings that actually made them fly. So they spent years building gliders and an engine to stick on it in the back of their shop in good old Dayton, Ohio. And by “years” I mean “seven”. It took the Wright Brothers only seven years to design and build the world’s first airplane when the rest of humanity had been trying to fly for centuries. Oh, and what’s even more badass is they did the airplane thing as a hobby part-time; because repairing and building custom bicycles is what paid their goddamn rent, so that was kind of priority one. When the “flyer” was complete, they packed the whole thing up and headed out for a test flight – but not in the wild back meadows of Dayton, Ohio – instead they went to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. And that’s why this whole thing is a mess.
Kitty Hawk, North Carolina was an ideal location for a number of reasons; the first being it was pretty much uninhabited and the Brothers didn’t want interlopers. Hell, today barely 3,000 people live there, in 1903 that number was probably 60 or less. The second was it had a sandy beach which would allow for a soft landing because even though the brothers had made an airplane, landing gear was going to have to come much later. Last was the wind and money. See, Kitty Hawk was the closest place to Dayton that was suitably windy, remote, and soft – so that meant the train fare was the cheapest.
Today Ohio and North Carolina both take credit for the Wright brothers and their world-changing invention. Ohio because the brothers developed and built their design in Dayton, and North Carolina because Kitty Hawk was the site of the Wrights’ first powered flight. North Carolina adopted the slogan “First in Flight” and plastered it all over their license plates. After seeing that, Ohio got its panties in a bunch, chose the slogan “Birthplace of Aviation” and put that on its license plates after a raised middle finger salute inside an outline of North Carolina was vetoed by the Governor.
When the U.S. Mint decided to make quarters interesting again and asked each state to design one, North Carolina chose a picture of the Wright Flyer taking off from Kitty Hawk with the phrase “First Flight”. Ohio then proceeded to go full F**K YOU with their quarter, changing “Birthplace of Aviation” to “Birthplace of Aviation Pioneers” and then stuck the Wright Flyer flying in the opposite direction – plus Neil Armstrong in his spacesuit staring down from the surface of THE GODDAMN MOON on the back of their quarter.
I’ll call your Wright Brothers and raise you a Neil Armstrong
I can only assume there was no room for one of those pictures of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes pissing on a silhouette of North Carolina because after all, Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson is from Chagrin Falls, Ohio.
Check out the state quarters. No other state (except for Ohio and North Carolina) has their design directly reference another state’s.
#4. Ohio vs. Michigan over EVERY GODDAMN THING BECAUSE F**K MICHIGAN
And now the big one… the crazy bizarre hate-hate relationship between Ohio and as it is sometimes called “That State up North”, because a lot of Ohioans choke on their own bile whenever they try to say the word “Michigan”.
Most people seem to think this rivalry stems over a football game between The Ohio State University Buckeyes and the University of Michigan Wolverines which was first played in 1897 and has been played every year annually since 1918, almost always as each team’s final regular season game. Ohio State and Michigan have also been the two powerhouse schools in the Big Ten Conference, so the end of season meeting has usually acted as a Conference Championship game.
But, no, it goes much deeper than just football because Ohio and Michigan actually raised armies and attacked each other in 1835 and 1836.
The “Toledo War” as it is known was fought over a piece of land called The Toledo Strip, part of which is where (spoiler alert) the present day city of Toledo, Ohio sits.
The Toledo Strip is also a burlesque dance for people who love Kinger on M*A*S*H*
The dispute resulted from poor understanding of geographical features of the Great Lakes and varying interpretations of laws causing the governments of Ohio and Michigan to both claim sovereignty over a 468-square-mile region along the border, now known as the Toledo Strip. When Michigan petitioned for statehood in 1835, it sought to include the disputed territory within its boundaries; Ohio’s congressional delegation was in turn able to stall Michigan’s admission to the Union because being a dick and stalling shit in Congress is kinda Ohio’s “thing” (see Mount McKinley above).
When the war started Michigan wasn’t even a state yet and was still a territory under the leadership of a 24 year-old snot-nosed-brat named Stevens T. Mason, who had somehow been named the territorial Governor when he was only 19. Ohio had been a state for 33 years and was led by 54 year-old Governor Robert Lucas who had been a friggin’ spy for the U.S. Army during the War of 1812 when Mason was still in diapers.
Federal land surveyors had brilliantly released two completely different surveys, the first of which gave the territory to Ohio with the second giving it to Michigan. Going by the second survey, Michigan began setting up townships in the area with giant “THIS IS MICHIGAN’S, BITCH” signs everywhere. Ohio for its part also starting setting up a county government encompassing the strip and named it Lucas County. This name sent Michigan into a giant hissy fit and they soon passed the “Pains and Penalties Act” which made it a criminal offense for Ohioans to carry out governmental actions in the Strip, under penalty of a fine of $1,000 (or 8 Bajillion dollars in 2015 terms) and/or up to five years imprisonment at hard labor.
Now, the shit was on like Donkey Kong.
After Michigan’s little law was passed, Ohio raised an actual militia army of 600 men, then set up camp right outside the Toledo Strip. Michigan responded with almost 1,000 armed douchebags of their own and the two armies began drilling and preparing for a fight. That fight would become known as the Battle of Phillips Corners and much like all of this was a bunch of stupid rolled into a big ball of are you for real?
Before any shots were fired, President Andrew Jackson had gotten involved and because Ohio was an actual state and Michigan was still just a territory, it was decided the first survey was the correct one and Michigan was told to suck it up. Governor Lucas sent out surveyors to mark the original line where they were promptly attacked by 50 members of the Michigan army and 9 members of the survey crew were captured as “prisoners of war”. I wish I was making this shit up but I’m not. In response, Ohio’s 600 man strong militia swelled to 10,000 almost overnight.
Things were getting way out of hand, and when a Michigan Sheriff went to the mayor of Toledo’s house to arrest him, the mayor’s son stabbed the Sheriff in the leg with a knife and the first and only causality of the war was recorded. The Sheriff was fine because the mayor’s son used the 1830’s version of a Swiss Army knife to try to gut him; but still, actual blood was finally shed over this stupid crap.
President Jackson was so done with it by this point that he started Executive Ordering all over the place and removed Mason as Governor of Michigan and replaced him with what was basically a broom handle dressed in a suit. Jackson also said that Michigan could become a state if it would just give Ohio the damn Toledo Strip. In addition, Jackson said as compensation, Michigan could have a whole bunch of worthless land above Wisconsin called The Upper Peninsula. Michigan took a hard look at this offer and replied with a hearty “Go f**k yourself.”
The war finally ended when Michigan realized they were driving themselves bankrupt funding an army whose sole purpose was to arrest people from Ohio who were wandering around an area that Washington D.C. said was owned by Ohio. On January 26, 1837, Michigan was finally admitted to the Union as the 26th state, but without the Toledo Strip. And all was well with the world…
…except it wasn’t and Ohio and Michigan still fought over that area in court and pretty much everywhere else until around 1973.
Our fighting men and women take a break from hunting down the Taliban to engage the real enemy!
That’s right, the boundary dispute wasn’t officially settled until 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court in Michigan v. Ohio, ruled that the boundary between the two states was angled to the northeast, as described in Ohio’s state constitution, and not a straight east–west line as described in Michigan’s dreams. One consequence of the court decision was that tiny Turtle Island in Lake Erie originally treated as being wholly in Michigan, was now split between the two states.
Decades before the courts finally ruled, the two states even declared a truce in 1915 deciding instead to let their two Universities duke it out on the football field for bragging rights over who won the war, which fueled the early days of the football game rivarly.
The 1915 truce was actually photographed and covered by the media. I know, right?
The football game hasn’t really solved much either. As a matter of fact, it has made things worse and a particularly spectacular period between 1969 and 1978 when each team was ranked in the top 5 in the national polls is referred to as “The Ten Year War.”
That isn’t just a picture, it’s a song sung at pep rallys too. Click on the picture and listen to the hatred.
“We Don’t Give a Damn for the Whole State of Michigan” is a song featuring a swear word that I was taught as a child… in Kindergarten… at a Catholic School.
Like I said, the football game hasn’t really solved much. Since 1918 when both schools started playing each other as members of the Big Ten Conference, the series stands at 46 Michigan wins, 46 Ohio State wins, and 4 ties.
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