Thursday Thirteen v.9

Thirteen Cool Things About Lawrence, Kansas

1. Google Earth has a default position when started up that is centered exactly on the town of Lawrence (specifically, on an apartment building lying between Compton Square and Regency Place). This may be verified by running the software and zooming in from the default start position without rotating the virtual globe at all. This location was set by Brian McClendon, a 1986 graduate of the University of Kansas and now a director of engineering at Google.

2. In the 1983 TV movie The Day After, Lawrence was ravaged by fallout from detonations of nearby Soviet nuclear bombs, including one which destroyed Kansas City, Missouri.

3. Lawrence was also destroyed in the 2006 TV Series Jericho.

Editor's note: TV hates Lawrence, Kansas.

4. There are three separate tunnel systems underneath Massachusetts Street, as well as an extensive steam-tunnel network underneath the University of Kansas, which includes tunnels designed as nuclear attack shelters.

5. The inventor of basketball, James Naismith, was the first basketball coach at the University of Kansas and was the only KU coach with a losing record.

6. In the television show Supernatural, the main characters were born in Lawrence; several scenes from the pilot (and one whole episode) were set in Lawrence.

7. Well-known singer-songwriter Josh Ritter wrote a song called "Lawrence, Kansas."

8. Some exterior shots for the CBS series Jericho were filmed in Lawrence. In the seventh episode of the series, it is mentioned that Lawrence was destroyed by a nuclear blast.

9. Lawrence holds the distinction of having been the site of operation for the state's first railroad in 1871 and the city where the state's first telephone was installed in 1877.

10. While Kansas may be a heavily Republican state, Lawrence is reliably Democrat. Douglas County, where Lawrence is located, was one of only two counties in Kansas whose majority voted for John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. Douglas County has supported the Democratic candidate the past four presidential elections.

11. The New York Times called Lawrence "the most vital music scene between Chicago and Denver" in a travel column on February 25, 2005, and Rolling Stone named Lawrence one of the "best lil' college towns" in the country in their August 11, 2005 issue.

12. Poet, author, and counterculture figure William S. Burroughs moved to Lawrence in 1983 and died there at age 83, from complications following a heart attack, on August 2, 1997.

13. Notable natives and residents: Hugh Beaumont (Leave it to Beaver); Jim Thorpe; Jim Ryun; actor Don Johnson; Bob Dole; Erin Brockovich; Wilt Chamberlin; baseball author Bill James and Paul Pierce from the Boston Celtics.