Heritage Moments

When Manny Fried passed away at 97 in 2011, the Buffalo theater community lost a giant. But not just the theater community. Buffalo labor lost a giant too.

What could more perfectly distill life in mid-20th-century Buffalo than bowling? As Oscar Madison exclaimed as he gazed out a window during a visit to the Queen City in a 1974 episode of “The Odd Couple”, “Who would believe that eight bowling alleys on the same block could do much business?”

Western New Yorkers LOVE their football, but how many know that the man dubbed the “Father of Modern Football” came from Springville in southern Erie County?

Why Do People in the Midwest Sound Like Buffalonians? Blame It on the Erie Canal

It’s a long way from the Chautauqua County Village of Frewsburg to the Supreme Court of the United States, and longer still to Nuremberg, Germany, and the trial of the most vicious murderers of the 20th century. But Robert H. Jackson successfully and masterfully made those journeys.

Hard to believe it today, but until 1984, a man could be arrested for asking another man to sleep with him. That intrusive law wrecked the lives of hundreds of men in New York State before it was finally abolished, thanks to the courage of two Buffalonians.

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was a landmark event for the labor movement, its impact still felt by every worker in America today.

Along the Niagara Frontier the War of 1812 was a special kind of hell, a futile succession of battles and skirmishes that left death and devastation in their wake.

There isn’t a soccer fan on earth who is unfamiliar with the Mexican national anthem, and how stirring it sounds when tens of thousands of Mexico fans sing ¡Mexicanos, al grito de guerra! at stadiums around the world. But how many know that this rousing tune was written by a Buffalonian?

For over a century, the Group of 7 has had an almost mystical hold on the Canadian imagination.