Getting To Know Your Shockers 4: The City of Wichita

Hello,

This is the fourth of my series on the Wichita State Shockers as they prepare to play Louisville in the Final Four on Saturday. The first 3 Shockers blogs dealt with famous alumni, the coach Gregg Marshall and then the key players. This blog will be about the city of Wichita itself. Wichita is the largest city in Kansas. Also Wichita is the county seat of Sedgwick County. It's also home to the Final Four bound Shockers, which has a 15,000 person student body.

This isn't going to be a very long blog. If you want to read a very extensive rundown of Wichita, go to it's Wikipedia page. That was clearly written by someone with a lot of time on their hands. Five of the most interesting things from Wichita's Wikipedia page:

1) Wichita was incorporated in 1870, it was a trading post. It also was in a prominent place on the Chisholm Trail.

2) Wichita has served as a trading center for at least 11,000 years. Human habitation in the area has been documented back to 3,000 B.C.

3) Wichita has had a lot of noteworthy achievements with aviation. Oil was discovered in Wichita in 1914 and 1915 and some of that money went to the beginning aviation industry.

4) Both Pizza Hut and White Castle, among many other notable companies were founded in Wichita. In spite of originating in Wichita, White Castle no longer has a presence in Kansas at all.

5) This is pretty cool, I'm just going to print this verbatim: "In October 1932, orchestra leader Gage Brewer introduced the electric guitar to the world from Wichita using an instrument developed by what would later become known as the Rickenbacker Guitar Company."

Bonus point: Many famous people came from Wichita, people like Don Johnson and Kirstie Alley. Wichita is also the location for the entire Dennis The Menace comic strip.

Thanks to Wikipedia.org, to read the full page go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchita,_Kansas

Wichita has been named in a couple of popular songs, one that jumped to my mind is Glen Campbell's "Wichita Lineman":



Wichita is also mentioned in one of the best songs in the last several years, The White Stripes "Seven Nation Army":



From "Seven Nation Army":

I'm going to Wichita
Far from this opera forevermore
I'm gonna work the straw
Make the sweat drip out of every pore
And I'm bleeding, and I'm bleeding, and I'm bleeding
Right before the lord
All the words are gonna bleed from me
And I will think no more

Shawn Colvin has a song called "Wichita Skyline":



If Colvin's name sounds familiar, she's the singer of "Sunny Came Home", a decidedly unhappy song.



themusicaddict