The rotten-egg stench that drove Bruce Springsteen out of Tacoma

According to Boing Boing, Tacoma, Washington's most notorious feature is the Aroma of Tacoma—a rotten-egg stench from the city's tideflats that drove away Bruce Springsteen. The odor earned its distinctive name by the early nineteen-forties, though its notoriety runs much deeper. In nineteen-oh-one, resident George Francis Train was already rhyming about the smell in a civic cheer. For most of the twentieth century, the stench was so familiar to Interstate five travelers that it became part of Tacoma's identity.

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