I had to get the full story from the horse’s mouth. In this case, the horse is Jason Kirin, a writer and researcher of Pittsburgh’s history of violence against sex workers; work he does in honor of his grandmother, Shirley Cavanaugh, who is the subject of the aforementioned book.

On a cold winter day in 1986, Frank Furko walked into the Animal Rescue League in Pittsburgh, thinking he would take a look at the dogs and maybe adopt one if he could find one that was nice. While he was there, a little, pudgy, orange tabby cat caught his eye.

By the end of the day on March 13th, nearly two feet of snow covered the region, courtesy of what is now referred to as the Storm of the Century.

The city of Pittsburgh has its own, lesser-known aviation mystery that remains unsolved to this day: the B-25 bomber that (maybe) lays in the depths of the Monongahela River (the mon), often referred to as Pittsburgh’s ‘ghost bomber’. 

You wouldn’t know it from the outside, but within the walls of that church are some of the most overlooked pieces of art in the United States: The Murals of Maxo Vanka.

With the help of Dr. Peter Safar, Dr. Nancy Caroline, and Phil Hallen, a group of uneducated, and otherwise “unemployable” black people helped create the National standard for EMS procedures that we still use to this day.