World trivia | 100 facts about famous cities (part 3)

Cities exist during most of the time that humans also exist on earth, and they are an integral part of our modern culture.

Some cities are small, some are larger, but definitely, some cities are quite famous, and maybe known to each human on planet Earth. But except their names, how many things do we know about them? Let’s find out more about some of the most popular cities in the world!

1. New York City is not the capital of the U.S.A., but it is kinda its financial, and business center.
2. New York City’s acronym is NYC.
3. Times Square is named after The New York Times.
4. Originally, it was known as Longacre Square until The Times moved there in 1904.
5. NYC is famous for… pizza!
6. In fact, it’s home to the first-ever United States pizzeria.
7. Lombardi’s opened in 1895 and still serves some of the best pizza in New York City.
8. The price of a pizza slice and a single subway ride has remained relatively equal more than 50 years resulting in what economists call “The Pizza Principle.”
9. More than 800 languages are spoken in New York City.
10. As a result, it is the most linguistically diverse city in the world.
11. Brooklyn Bridge is a famous NYC landmark.
12. It is older than Tower Bridge in London.
13. In NYC there are a lot of cars honking their horns since the traffic jam usually is a problem.
14. However, honking your horn in NYC is actually illegal.
15. New York City, not Washington D.C., was the first capital of the United States of America.
16. There is a famous phrase that goes like this: “faster than a New York minute.”
17. However, did you know there is a birth in New York City every 4.4 minutes?
18. It’s not illegal to go topless in New York City.
19. The New York City library is home to more than 50 million books.
20. So, that makes it the third-largest library in the world and the second-largest in the United States behind the Library of Congress.
21. The Empire State Building gets hit by lightning around 23 times a year.
22. New York City has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, largest Chinese population outside of Asian and largest Puerto Rican population of any city in the world.
23. Going topless may be legal in New York City but farting in a church could result in a misdemeanor.
24. This is due to a law stating a person is guilty of disruption or disturbance of a religious service, funeral, burial or memorial service “when he or she makes unreasonable noise or disturbance while at a lawfully assembled religious service, funeral, burial or memorial service, or within one hundred feet thereof, with intent to cause annoyance or alarm or recklessly creating a risk thereof.”
25. Up until the 1920s, May 1 was moving day in New York City.
26. As such, everyone was who moving apartments in New York City had to move on this day!
27. The Central Park Mall is the only straight path in Central Park.
28. It was originally designed to let wealthy New Yorkers stroll, socialize and show off their fancy duds.
29. New York City’s Federal Reserve Bank has the largest gold storage in the world.
30. The vault, which holds more than 7,000 tons of gold bars or roughly $90 billion dollars, is 80-feet below ground.
31. Have you heard of The Lowline? It’s the world’s first underground park in the world and is located on Manhattan’s West Side.
32. Grand Central Terminal has a Whispering Gallery. Stand at opposite diagonal corners of the room to whisper to someone standing on the other side of the room.
33. The oldest building in New York City dates back to 1642.
34. It is known as Wyckoff Farm, the house, which is located in Brooklyn, is now a museum dedicated to the city’s Dutch heritage.
35. Cowboys used to patrol the West Side of Manhattan.
36. This happened because their job was to wrangle people out of the way of freight trains in an effort to avoid accidents. Luckily, as safety measures improved, they were no longer needed and phased out by 1941.
37. 275 of the 800 known North American bird species have been spotted in New York’s Central Park.
38. More than 8 million people live in New York City.
39. That means 1 in every 38 people in the United States calls this bustling city home.
40. The Statue of Liberty was given to the U.S.A. by France as a gift.
41. The gift was bestowed in 1886 for America’s centennial celebration. It was then shipped as 350 pieces in over 200 crates and took more than four months to assemble.
42. If Brooklyn were its own cit it would be the fourth largest city in the United States.
43. Now, it’s just a huge borough of New York City. Actually, its largest!
44. “The Big Apple” is one of New York City’s most famous nicknames.
45. The name stems from a local newspaper’s horse racing column in the 1920s which used the phrase to describe a bug money price at popular horse races around the city.
46. Athens is the largest city in Greece, and it is also its capital.
47. Yet Athens is not the first Greek capital, as the first one was the city of Nafplio.
48. The area on which the city of Athens now stands is said to have been continuously inhabited for over 7,000 years.
49. The oldest discovered evidence of human settlement is the Cave of Schist, which might date back as far as 11,000 to 7,000 BC!
50. Its symbol is the Acropolis of Athens that in Greek means “the city’s edge”.
51. In ancient times, there were many “Acropolis” iv every ancient greek city.
52. Athens was ideally placed to be a center of trade and travel.
53. As far back as the Iron Age in 900 BC, Athens was seen as the place to be if you wanted to make it big.
54. German occupation of Greece was focused on the area around Athens, and they made sure everyone knew it by flying the Nazi flag over the Acropolis. But some brave men actually took it off and rose again the Greek flag.
55. Despite Athens being the main urban center of Greece, a relatively high percentage of their Jewish population—about half—was saved from the Holocaust.
56. In other parts of Greece, an appalling 90% of Jews were killed by the Nazis.
57. One reason for the lower ratio of deaths in Athens was because the Jewish population had integrated so well amongst the Orthodox Christians that outsiders found it very difficult to locate them. Another reason was through the actions of heroic resistance fighters who sheltered Jews.
58. Athens’s famous rival during the Ancient Times was Spart.
59. They fought during the famous Peloponnesian War.
60. The Peloponnesian War resulted in the defeat of Athens by Sparta and its allies—helped in part by Persian finance. The triumphant Spartans removed the democratic system in place at Athens and installed an oligarchy of 30 men known to history as the Thirty Tyrants.
61. heir rule over Athens resulted in widespread corruption, exiling prominent Athenians who were pro-democratic, and killing up to 5% of the entire Athenian population. Ironically, their ruthless measures to stomp out resistance only confirmed to the city of Athens that they needed to be overthrown.
62. As a result, the Thirty Tyrants’ rule lasted a mere eight months before they were forced to abandon ship—an apt metaphor for Athens, we think
63. Athens’s best era was the one people call the “Golden Era of Pericles” of “the 5th century B.C.”.
64. Athens is home to a total of 17 Foreign Archaeological Institutes.
65. Despite the facts of the new and modern Archaeological Museum of Acropolis, some important statues named “Caryatid”, and were stolen by the British during the Ottoman Empire era, are still not given back to Greece.
66. In 2015, 240,000 people were asked by European Best Destination to vote on which European city was the best one to visit, and Athens came in third place.
67. Athens has a notable position in the world of basketball. The city hosted the final game of the Euroleague three times during the 1980s and 1990s.
68. One notable example of a famous Athenian in the modern today would undoubtedly be Arianna Huffington, the co-founder and former editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post.
69. Athens hosted the Olympic Games in 2004.
70. Athens also hosted the 2011 Special Olympics Summer Games.
71. Over 7,500 athletes traveled to Athens to participate, representing 185 countries.
72. The city of Athens was named after Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, among other things.
73. She and the god of the ocean, Poseidon, had a rivalry over who would become the patron of this new city. Each bestowed a gift to the city and were judged on which was the better gift.
74. Depending on the different versions of the legend, Poseidon either gave the gift of water or the horse.
75. In both versions, however, Athena prevails with her gift of the olive tree.
76. Beijing is the capital of the People’s Republic of China.
77. Bei means northern, and jing means capital. Beijing literally means the north capital.
78. Beijing is the center of the nation’s politics and international exchanges.
79. It is also China’s second-largest city after Shanghai.
80. Siheyuans, the city’s traditional housing style, and hutongs, the narrow alleys between Siheyuans, are common in urban Beijing and are also major tourist attractions. Siheyuans are known as courtyard houses.
81. They usually consist of small buildings that are arranged in such a way that they create an outer wall and an inner private courtyard. Siheyuans always feature an elaborate entrance gate.
82. These were historically homes of the wealthy and were often given as gifts by the emperor to his loyal followers.
83. China’s official language, Mandarin, is mostly based on the Beijing dialect, and accent.
84. Beijing opera or Peking opera, a traditional form of Chinese theater, is an important part of the Chinese culture.
85. This art form consists of a combination of song, spoken dialogue, and codified action sequences. People practice their opera singing at parks around the city as well as in opera houses.
86. Beijing has two official flowers: the Chinese rose and the chrysanthemum.
87. Beijing has a population of 19 million people, making it the second-largest city in China. Only Shanghai, with a population of 22 million, is bigger.
88. Beijing currently has three airports, with a fourth being planned. The military airport, Beijing Nanyuan Airport was established in 1910, making it China’s oldest airport.
89. In 2015, 90.1 million people used the Beijing Capital Airport. That made it the second-busiest airport in the world.
90. The Forbidden City, located in the center of Beijing, is the world’s biggest palatial structure. It contains 980 buildings, including 90 palaces and courtyards, and over 8700 rooms.
91. Forbidden City, also known as Gu Gong in Chinese, lies at the city center of Beijing, and once served as the imperial palace for 24 emperors during the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1368 – 1911).
92. From 2000-2007 there was a Starbucks in the Forbidden City. It was removed after protests by Chinese critics who said it damaged a major historical site.
93. Managers of the Forbidden City decided that they wanted all shops on its grounds to operate under the palace’s brand.
94. The city has such a rich and deep history, with different people throughout the centuries all vying for control of what was once known as the City of Ji.
95. Interestingly, Beijing literally translates as Northern Capital; it has also been known as Nanjing (Southern Capital), Zhongdu (Central Captial), Dadu (The Great Capital), Yanjing (The Yan Capital), and Beiping (Central Peace).
96. There is a huge amount of Beijing real estate dedicated to bicycle paths and parking
97. According to a recent census, the most popular surname in Beijing is Wang, with an impressive 11% holding the name.
98. The Great Wall at Badaling, although 80 km from the city center, is technically in the Beijing Municipality.
99. The most famous dish in the city is Beijing roast duck. Therefore, Beijing is home to the world’s largest and longest wall.
100. Beijing is known for its superb calligraphy and its most popular souvenirs include calligraphy brushes and ink pads.

World trivia | 100 facts about famous cities (part 2)