This image is the cover for the book Cincinnati Curiosities

Cincinnati Curiosities

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.

Greg Hand

Greg Hand is the proprietor of the Cincinnati Curiosities blog. After graduating from the University of Cincinnati, he worked for several years as a reporter and eventually editor for the Press Newspapers. He returned to the University of Cincinnati, where he headed the public relations office. Hand coauthored three books about the university with Kevin Grace. Since his retirement from the university, Hand contributes history content regularly to Cincinnati magazine and the WCPO-TV Cincy Lifestyles show. With Molly Wellmann and Kent Meloy, Hand presents entertaining history chats in bars and saloons through a program called "Stand-Up History."

The History Press