Cincinnati Curiosities

Book excerpt: Explore the eccentric side of yesterday's Queen City Cincinnatians today wrap themselves in a comforting blanket of serene conformity, soothed by the myth that the Queen City has always been a bland, somewhat Germanic, little backwater. History tells us otherwise. Old Cincinnati was a pretty strange place. UFOs? Witchcraft? Sea Monsters? Occult societies? Public executions? All very common in Old Cincinnati. Over its history, this burgeoning river metropolis pursued the unusual, the sensational and the controversial. Cincinnati was big - among the ten largest U.S. cities. And it was rude and crude, still shaking off the dust from its years as a frontier outpost. Much of the popular nightlife then would be illegal today. Buckle up as author Greg Hand leads a rambunctious tour through the old, weird Cincinnati.