3 Fun Facts About the Columbus Blue Jackets

The Blue Jackets were founded in 2000. That was a crazy year. That same year, Lars Ulrich of Metallica started a lawsuit against Napster, which was a file sharing program that allowed people to share songs for free, which is of course illegal. But why did Lars file the lawsuit? He’s the drummer. Maybe James Hetfield said to the band, “Listen, boys, let’s have Lars file the lawsuit. It takes the heat off the band a bit, and everyone knows drummers are a little crazy.”

The Blue Jackets name recalls the state’s history in the Civil War. Not the War Between the States — The War Between the Real Estate Companies. A professor at Ohio University in Athens explained, “Legend has it that Ohio was ground zero between the battle of the real estate agents with yellow jackets and the local group with blue jackets. The battle lasted 21 days, ending only when the blue side sold a four-plex next to a strip mall for 20 percent over market value, soundly defeating the yellow jackets.”

The Blue Jackets play at Nationwide Arena. A company spokesperson said, “Of all the great things about Nationwide Arena, we are perhaps best known as the home of the world’s largest T-shirt launching Gatling gun. We can launch 1,000 T-shirts every minute into the crowd at hockey games, basketball games, and many other events. It’s not flawless, though. Normally, it moves back and forth as it fires the shirts into the crowd. One time it got stuck, and shirts kept piling up on this family from Coshocton. It took us three days to dig them out.”