Happy Birthday Cleveland: 211 Candles Are On Your Cake Today

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- From down on the banks of the Ohio River, The Bellwether sends a happy birthday card to Cleveland, which was settled on July 22 1796 -- a date that nobody seems to have noticed or celebrated today. For shame.

[UPDATE: 6:40 am EDT 7/23/07 -- Another notable anniversary occurred in northeast Ohio place yesterday, and The Bellwether is proud to mention the milestone, even if belatedly. Jill Zimon is starting her third year today. Jill is one of the top bloggers in this section of the universe. Is it pure coincidence that WLST and Cleveland took form on the same day? Sounds to me like intelligent design was at work, and that the intelligent designer . . . ]

Here's the account from Wikipedia about the gestation and Cleveland's birth:

"The expedition then coasted along the shore of Lake Erie, and landed on July 4, 1796 at the mouth of Conneaut Creek, which they named Port Independence. The Indians were propitiated with gifts of beads and whiskey, and allowed the surveys to proceed. General Cleaveland, with a surveying party, coast along the shore and on July 22, 1796 landed at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. He ascended to the bank, and, beholding a beautiful plain covered with a luxuriant forest-growth, divined that the spot where he stood, with the river on the west and Lake Erie on the north, was a favorable site for a city."

Cincinnati was founded eight years earlier, and had already become a thriving settlement in the Northwest Territory. Originally, the Lake Erie community was called Cleaveland. But in 1830, the story goes, a newspaper editor could not fit that word across the top of his broadsheet. So he dropped the "a" and called it Cleveland. The name stuck.