Unless you lived in Kitchener, you probably recall hearing WKBN from Youngstown, Ohio. The radio station at 570 AM has been on the air for a century and celebrates the date this Saturday with a huge party. (Now that Rogers shut down CKGL, it probably comes in around the Waterloo area, too, these days.)

The station began life on Sept. 26, 1926, and it has a remarkable origin story - it first went on the air from a tinkerer's living room, before his mother made him take the place outside and into their chicken coop!

"At the time, radio was not regulated by the government, so anyone with the right equipment could get onto the airwaves.

 “I had then a 1.5-kilowatt transformer, and so forth, and when I put that in mother’s pantry, and she heard the noise from it and saw the sparks flying from it, why she decided that I shouldn’t be in the pantry,” (founder Warren P.) Williamson recalled in an old interview.

His parents made him move his wireless set-up to a chicken coop out back, so he wouldn’t catch the house on fire."

From such humble beginnings a successful radio station was born and it's still around today. 

From chicken coop to airwaves: WKBN Radio turns 100