1. Notorious “Goodfellas” gangster Henry Hill was sent to live in Omaha for the rest of his life as an “average schnook” after entering the witness protection program.
2. Since 2010, Omaha has been home to the “Tattoo League,” a fantasy football league that requires the last place finisher to get a tattoo chosen by the league’s winner each year. Past loser tattoos have features unicorns, Care Bears and Justin Bieber.
3. Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning famously loves yelling “Omaha” at the line of scrimmage. The popular sports blog Deadspin determined using “Omaha” almost always signaled the snap was coming on the next “hut,” except a few occasions a game, which frequently led to defenses jumping offsides.
4. In Omaha, as in all of Nebraska, it is illegal for anyone with gonorrhea to marry.
5. Fu Manchu, an orangutan at the Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo, was known to climb through air vents and pick locks with a piece of metal wiring he kept hidden.
6. The Counting Crows’ 1993 album “August and Everything After” features a song titled “Omaha.” According to lead singer Adam Duritz, the song isn’t about the city itself, but “how circular life is, how it turns people over the way the seasons turn over.”
7. Bar owners are also legally required to be brewing soup while they’re selling beer.
8. There’s a good chance you know that Marlon Brando was born and raised in Omaha. You might not know that his mother, Jocelyn Brando, gave acting lessons to another famous Nebraskan actor, Henry Fonda, at the Omaha Community Playhouse.
9. In Nebraska, a parent can be arrested if their child burps in church. In Omaha, the law applies to sneezing too.
10. Johnny Carson also got his start in Omaha. Carson moved to Norfolk, Nebraska at age eight, and started his broadcasting career at Omaha’s WOW radio and television network in 1950.
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11. In Omaha, it’s also illegal for barbers to shave a man’s chest.
12. President Gerald Ford was born in Omaha, but his mother moved him to Oak Park, Illinois when he was just sixteen days old.
13. After completing meal at the Alpine Inn, you’re encouraged to toss your leftovers and bones out back for feral cats and raccoons to munch on out back.
14. Omaha also claims the “TV Dinner” as its own. Swanson popularized the concept in the early 1950s.
15. Brother Sebastian’s Steakhouse and Winery is designed to look like a monastery. A Gregorian chant plays as you enter, waiters dress like monks and the restaurant features a chapel and a library.
16. Lovingly known as the “Omaha Broom Man,” the late Rev. Livingston Wills started selling brooms door-to-door around Omaha in the 1950s. Wills continued selling brooms around the city for 55 years, well into his 80s, despite being almost completely blind.
17. Omaha-born musician Elliott Smith passed away in 2003, but still has a massive, loyal fanbase. These days fans pay tribute to the celebrated songwriter at a Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles mural that was featured on the cover of his 2000 album “Figure 8.”
18. Not to be confused with John Goodman of “The Big Lebowski” fame, Omahan Johnny Goodman was the last amateur to win the PGA Tour’s US Open all the way back in 1933.
19. Late in World War II, Japan sent exploding hydrogen balloons to the United States via jetstream. Almost all of them landed (harmlessly) along the West Coast, but one bomb made it all the way to Omaha’s Dundee neighborhood before exploding benignly in 1945. Today, a plaque marks the spot, with the words “A Japanese Balloon Bomb Exploded Here.”
20. According to local legend, the corned beef, Swiss cheese, Russian dressing, and sauerkraut sandwich known as the Reuben was invented in Omaha by a Lithuanian-born grocer named Reuben Kulakofsky.
21. Nebraska, alongside Maine, is one of two states that splits electoral votes for congressional districts.
22. Warren Buffett got his business start purchasing pinball machines and putting them in barber shops.
23. Buffett is famously the owner of the conglomerate company Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. Berkshire Hathaway probably owns a product you’ve used today, considering the company has whole or significant ownership of Heinz, Fruit of the Loom, Dairy Queen, Mars Inc., GEICO, Coca-Cola, and IBM.
24. If you bought into Berkshire Hathaway bright and early, you, sir or madam, are probably a very rich person. Now worth over $200,000 a share, in 1962 Buffett bought into the then-textile firm for $7 a share.
25. Omaha boasts two football players who went on to win the Heisman Trophy: University of Nebraska RB/WR Johnny Rodgers, who won the trophy in 1972, and University of Nebraska option QB Eric Crouch, who home the trophy in 2001.
26. With 8,500 South Sudanese residents, Omaha has the largest Sudanese refugee population in the United States. In total there are an estimated 30,000 South Sudanese refugees currently living in America.
27. Omaha’s ConAgra Food headquarters is home to a 6-foot tall bronze statue of Chef Boyardee, who was indeed a real person. Ettore “Hector” Boiardi started as a restaurateur in Cleveland, Ohio. After starting his own company, he was commissioned to provide rations during World War II.
28. Omaha’s Borsheim’s Fine Jewelry is the largest jewelry store in the country, and holds more than 100,000 jewelry pieces and watches.
29. Actor Nick Nolte grew up in Omaha, where he was the kicker for Westside High School’s football team.
30. Eighty feet tall and occupying 1.5 acres, Henry Doorly Zoo’s Lied Jungle is the world’s largest indoor rainforest exhibit.
31. Henry Doorly Zoo is also Nebraska’s number one paid tourist destination, having attracted more than 25 million visitors over the years. That’s about the same amount of people that live in all of Texas, and about 14 times the amount of people that live in the state of Nebraska.
32. Speaking of the Doorly Zoo, it made headlines in 2012 after two gorillas settled a disagreement the old fashioned way: tossing punches. Motuba, a 27-year-old silverback, ended up needing jaw surgery.
33. You have Omaha to thank (or not) for “Top 40” radio. Omahan and broadcasting magnate Todd Storz pioneered the format at the Omaha station KOWH during the early 1950s.
34. You could argue that “Cowboy” Jim James Dahlman might have benefited from terms limits. He served as Omaha’s mayor from 1906 to 1918 and then again between 1921 to 1930, at which point he died as he had lived: in office.
35. Omaha’s first postmaster, Alfred D. Jones, appointed in 1854, didn’t have an actual post office. Instead, he ran the post office out of his hat, where he kept the town’s letters.
36. If you’re from Omaha, you probably know its Fred Astaire’s home town. You might now know that his dad was a brewer and moved to the area to work at the Storz Brewing Company.
37. On August 25th, 1951, early in his anti-communist crusade, Joseph McCarthy gave a speech to a crowd of nearly 500 Omahans. The Lincoln Star claimed that McCarthy stated he was “alone is the savior of human freedom,” and called the visit “madness” on its editorial page.
38. You can thank Omaha for easy baking. Cake mix was developed in Omaha at Nebraska Consolidated Mills, which would later be known as ConAgra Foods
39. With the Sapp Brothers water tower, Omaha is home to the world’s largest coffee pot—although we’re pretty sure there’s no actual coffee in it.
40. Earlier this year, the Omaha bar Grane made waves in the whiskey world, becoming the first drinking establishment to use a dispensing machine for whiskey tasting.
41. Omaha’s Doorly Zoo is one of only fourteen zoos in North America to display okapi. There are roughly 10,000 okapi left in the wild, and during the 19th century, they were widely thought to be extinct.
42. You might know that the Oscar-nominated director Alexander Payne of “Nebraska” and “Sideways” fame is from Omaha, but you might not know that the usually highbrow director helped write the 2007 Adam Sandler comedy “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.”
43. With Morrison Stadium, Omaha’s Creighton University is the only university in the country with a stadium used exclusively for soccer.
44. Creighton alumni and current Atlanta Hawks sharpshooter Kyle Korver holds the NBA record for most consecutive games with a three pointer. His amazing 127 game streak ended in March 2014.
45. Held in Omaha in 1898, the the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition was a massive, six month-long world’s fair. Two of the biggest attractions were a speech by President William McKinley and a Wild West show from Buffalo Bill Cody. Over 2.5 million people attended.
46. Also regarding the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition: a whopping 21 temporary buildings, many of them on-the-cheap recreations of Greek and Roman temples, were constructed to house the exposition’s over 4,000 exhibits.
47. Native Omahan and professional etiquette Letitia Baldrige, known as the “Doyenne of Decorum,” helped get the Kennedy family’s manners up to par following John F. Kennedy Democratic primary victory in 1960. Baldrige took the job despite being a registered Republican.
48. According to the Weather Channel, Omaha is the fifth coldest major city in America.
What’s your favorite Omaha fun fact? Tell us in the comments below!
