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Political campaigns can turn the nation into a veritable battleground. Perhaps it is fitting then, that the place where the modern political campaign is said to have been launched is the town of Battle Ground, Indiana.
Journalists could not come up with enough awestruck prose to describe a technological first occurring on the evening of March 31, 1880 in the north-central Indiana city of Wabash. Although a demonstration had been conducted in Cleveland the year before, Wabash may lay claim to the title of the first city to have been wholly lit by electric light.
In August 2007, a resident of Shelbyville earned global recognition for the central Indiana city. Upon the death of Japan’s Yone Minegawa that month, 114-year-old Hoosier Edna Scott Parker rose from the position of the nation’s oldest person to the world’s reigning supercentenarian.
Although it’s certainly not the geographic center of the continental United States, the state of Indiana has nonetheless played the role of “The Crossroads of America”.