I was interviewed last week for a piece in Seattle Metropolitan magazine, which started with a five-question quiz on Seattle trivia. I only knew the last two, and I’ll happily scoop the mag here because I know most of you probably don’t subscribe to Seattle Metropolitan: I knew the name of Nirvana’s first album, and the novel from which Starbucks Coffee borrowed its name. If you didn’t know that Rutherford B. Hayes was the first sitting U.S. President to visit Seattle, you probably wouldn’t have done much better than me on the other three.

But it started me thinking: what Seattle trivia would I know offhand? Here are a few off the top of my head:

• The term “skid row” originated in Seattle, where it was used for one particular seedy neighborhood where logs would “skid” downhill toward the waterfront.
• Seattle is the seat of Washington’s King County (hence: Kingdome), which changed its name in 1986 without actually changing its name. King County was originally named for William Rufus King, a U.S. vice president mostly notable for spending almost his entire 45 days in office busily dying of tuberculosis in Cuba. Since King was a slaveholder, it was no-brainer to “rename” King County in 1986 for Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
• Seattle’s iconic Smith Tower was the tallest skyscraper west of the Mississippi for almost 50 years.
• Despite its reputation, Seattle actually gets less rain per year than Miami does. But Miami, unlike Seattle, also gets occasional sunshine. Sunshine makes Seattleites squint and hiss like Gollum
• If the oft-quoted late-’90s statistic is true and Bill Gates really does make $300 a second, it would take him almost three hours to rack up my total Jeopardy! winnings.