facts about worcester

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  • Worcester’s Elm Park is considered to be oldest public city park in the nation. It was designed by Olmstead who designed New York’s Central Park and Boston’s Emerald Necklace.
  • The ‘60 icon, the smiley face ☺, was created in Worcester . . . so was the pink flamingo lawn ornament.
  • The world owes a debt to the Worcester area for the rickshaw, the monkey wrench, the spring bed, the lockstitch sewing machine, the truss bridge, the Valentine’s Day card, White Chocolate, the wind chill factor, the speed of light, Duncan Donuts, Near East Food Products, Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, the birth control pill, The Farmer’s Almanac, the postage stamp, and shredded wheat.
  • President John Adams was a Worcester school teacher after graduating from Harvard.
  • The founder of the U.S. Naval Academy, George Bancroft, was from Worcester.
  • The following famous people were from the Worcester area: horticulturist Luther Burbank, Johnny Appleseed, Red Cross founder Clara Barton, sixties radical Abbie Hoffman, actor-comedian Dennis Leary, and missionary Luther Rice.
  • Celtics basketball great Bob Cousy still lives in Worcester and is often sited.
  • The father of modern rocketry, Robert Goddard, was from Worcester, taught at WPI, and launched his famous rocket from nearby Auburn.
  • Moon mission astronaut Buz Aldrin was a member of Belmont Street Baptist Church for a short time.
  • Worcester has produced several baseball hall-of-famers.
  • Baseball’s first no hitter was pitched here in Worcester in 1875.
  • A Worcester man wrote “Casey at the Bat” about a Worcester classmate in 1888 and Worcesterite Esther Forbes wrote Johnny Tremain.
  • Worcester’s WORC was the first radio station in the country to air an rock band called “The Beatles.”
  • Almost half of the classical music recorded in the U.S. is recorded in Worcester’s exquisite Mechanics Hall.
  • Worcester County has a lake officially named Lake Chargoggagoggmanchaggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. Some people around here can actually say this. Everyone around here just calls it Webster Lake.
  • Worcester has 13 colleges and universities. Most prestigious are Holy Cross, Clark University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute
  • Worcester the third largest city in New England. It can’t compare to Boston and was barely beaten by Providence in the last census.