Lost a letter so a newspaper's masthead would fit
Cleveland began in 1796 as a survey camp. General Moses Cleaveland led a Connecticut Land Company crew scouting the newly acquired Western Reserve, picked a spot at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River on Lake Erie, laid out a New England-style public square, then went home and never came back. The town kept his name and his spelling until 1831, when a local newspaper dropped the first "a" because it wouldn't fit on the masthead; the shorter spelling stuck. The Ohio and Erie Canal, finished in 1832, connected the town to the Ohio River and set off decades of industrial growth, including the founding of John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil here in 1870. In 1879, Cleveland became the first city in the country to light a public square with electricity, using Charles Brush's arc lamp in what's now Public Square. The Cuyahoga River itself caught fire more than a dozen times over the decades; a minor 1969 blaze drew national attention and helped push Congress toward the Clean Water Act. Two Cleveland teenagers dreamed up Superman here in 1933, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame now anchors the shore where Alan Freed staged what's considered the first rock concert.
