holy crap! i've gotta get myself one of those!
Tell us a strange fact about your hometown
- Thread starter Capn Flukie
- Start date
holy crap! i've gotta get myself one of those!
In her book "In the Land of Invented Languages" Arika Okrent devotes several chapters to Klingon and it speakers. It is a very interesting and amusing read.
i heard tell that my home town used to be called 'Gotham' but i dunno whether it's true... Googling doesn't reveal anything...
When my parents first bought their house here, the area was a big producer of fresh eggs. That means there were chickens, lots and lots of them, on about three dozen large chicken ranches and assorted smaller ones, and with that many chickens comes a lot of a particular chicken by-product. Now imagine lots of flies. More flies than that. Now multiply that by a hundred thousand or a million, and you're beginning to grasp how thick the flies were here. There were jokes about the fly being the official town bird.
The human population of the town has nearly tripled since then and all of the chicken ranches are gone now but one. I don't miss the stench of chicken manure and I don't miss the tiny, swarming air force, but they were very much a fact here for a long time.
The human population of the town has nearly tripled since then and all of the chicken ranches are gone now but one. I don't miss the stench of chicken manure and I don't miss the tiny, swarming air force, but they were very much a fact here for a long time.
Victoria BC has the second most restaurants per capita of any city in North America after San Francisco).
You know as much as I do.
Another fascinating Baltimore law: It is illegal to mistreat an oyster. Now, I'm not sure how one goes about mistreating an oyster, but apparently eating it does not count.
Seattle also continually ranks in first or second place when it comes to how well-educated the populace is, in terms of bachelor degrees or higher.
But sometimes one wonders at the accuracy of such statements.And the President of the United States of America was born in our sister city (Mombasa, Kenya).
Anyone who gave a crap could search that text and fill in the blanks....
Benedict Arnold came here for several years and worked with his sons. He (allegedly) screwed so many people over that he was burned in effegy in front of his house and chased out of town, back to London. Our town was populated by British loyalists from the US after the revolution, so I guess neither side liked him much.
My hometown of Padua is proverbially famous for having a field with no grass, a café with no doors and a Saint with no name:
- A field with no grass: Prato della Valle, which is basically a huge parking lot, but with a lovely little island in the middle...
- A café with no doors: Caffè Pedrocchi, which until 1916 was open 24 hours a day
- A Saint with no name: Saint Anthony, commonly referred to as Il Santo (The Saint)
- A field with no grass: Prato della Valle, which is basically a huge parking lot, but with a lovely little island in the middle...
- A café with no doors: Caffè Pedrocchi, which until 1916 was open 24 hours a day
- A Saint with no name: Saint Anthony, commonly referred to as Il Santo (The Saint)
In 1901, the founders of Pacific City (soon to become Huntington Beach after a huge land deal was struck with tycoon Henry Huntington in exchange for him extending the Long Beach Electric Rail Line there) wanted to give the area a more populated look, so they transported numerous homes and a church from neighboring Newport Beach over the beach at low-tide to the new city to encourage development.
A year after Huntington Beach was incorporated in 1904, the new Huntington Beach Company was still having difficulty encouraging residents to settle there. The company began a unique promotion offering a free lot along the beachfront with every purchase of a full Student's Reference Set of the Encyclopedia Americana. It was a huge success and brought hundreds of new residents to the city. Within fifteen years those same free lots would be worth a fortune when extensive deposits of oil were discovered there.
During WWII, fear of Japanese bombings and naval artillery inspired blackout conditions along the coast requiring headlights to be completely covered except for a tiny slit in the middle of the light. As a result, soldiers traveling along the unlighted Pacific Coast Highway in HB down to military bases in Oceanside or San Diego had taken to calling PCH "Blood Alley" due to the number of fatal head-on collisions between passing traffic that occurred there.
The local McDonnell-Douglas (now Boeing) plant was responsible for constructing the upper stages of the Saturn IB and V rockets of the Apollo program. As a result, numerous telephone poles in the vicinity are still marked "Apollo Dedicated Mission Control Line."
Huntington Beach has officially trademarked the slogans "Surf City, USA" and "Surf City, Huntington Beach" and has successfully defended the trademark from infringement by the city of Santa Cruz, California.
The Huntington Beach Pier (first built in 1904) has been partially collapsed or destroyed completely by extreme waves and weather four times - in 1912, 1939, 1983, and 1988 - before the most recent 31-foot wave/hurricane force wind/7.0 earthquake-resistant reinforced concrete incarnation was finally constructed in 1992.
A year after Huntington Beach was incorporated in 1904, the new Huntington Beach Company was still having difficulty encouraging residents to settle there. The company began a unique promotion offering a free lot along the beachfront with every purchase of a full Student's Reference Set of the Encyclopedia Americana. It was a huge success and brought hundreds of new residents to the city. Within fifteen years those same free lots would be worth a fortune when extensive deposits of oil were discovered there.
During WWII, fear of Japanese bombings and naval artillery inspired blackout conditions along the coast requiring headlights to be completely covered except for a tiny slit in the middle of the light. As a result, soldiers traveling along the unlighted Pacific Coast Highway in HB down to military bases in Oceanside or San Diego had taken to calling PCH "Blood Alley" due to the number of fatal head-on collisions between passing traffic that occurred there.
The local McDonnell-Douglas (now Boeing) plant was responsible for constructing the upper stages of the Saturn IB and V rockets of the Apollo program. As a result, numerous telephone poles in the vicinity are still marked "Apollo Dedicated Mission Control Line."
Huntington Beach has officially trademarked the slogans "Surf City, USA" and "Surf City, Huntington Beach" and has successfully defended the trademark from infringement by the city of Santa Cruz, California.
The Huntington Beach Pier (first built in 1904) has been partially collapsed or destroyed completely by extreme waves and weather four times - in 1912, 1939, 1983, and 1988 - before the most recent 31-foot wave/hurricane force wind/7.0 earthquake-resistant reinforced concrete incarnation was finally constructed in 1992.
Where i live isn't my hometown (that was Hollis, Queens, home to RUN DMC) but i've lived here for almost 30 years now. We have no interesting facts or things going on other than this:
John Haigh, the "acid bath murderer", was held in custody and put on trial in my hometown in the '40s. He 'disposed' of his murder victims bodies in vats of acid as he was under the impression that 'corpus delicti' would not incriminate him. (Oh we're in the UK now 
) (Google him I don't know how to do the posh link 
)
Unfortunately for Mr Haigh, apparently, gallstones, dentures and false fingernails do not dissolve, even in sulphuric acid and Haigh was caught, tried, found guilty and hanged on 10th August, 1949 by Master Executioner Albert Pierrepoint.
Oh and we are also famous for this monstrosity...
"Rising Universe"
Hangs head in shame
) (Google him I don't know how to do the posh link )Unfortunately for Mr Haigh, apparently, gallstones, dentures and false fingernails do not dissolve, even in sulphuric acid and Haigh was caught, tried, found guilty and hanged on 10th August, 1949 by Master Executioner Albert Pierrepoint.
Oh and we are also famous for this monstrosity...
"Rising Universe"
Hangs head in shame
^ Hmmmm. I don't mean to be crude but I think that "thing" was what Stan was looking for in the South Park movie.
It has been referred to as such and in cruder terms! Why would you make something that could be interpreted in that way? And how does it look like a "Rising Universe"?!
The city I consider my hometown (although I wasn't born there) was founded by Phrygians led by a survivor of the Trojan war, before it was destroyed by the Vikings in the early Middle Ages. But that's all legend. Sounds cool, though.
Had it been willing to spend some money in the fifteenth century, the city could also have thrown a serious spanner in the works when it came to the creation of the Netherlands as it exists now. The country may not have had a northern coastline.
The city also has the highest percentage of 20 to 25-year-olds of the entire country (more than 15%).
Had it been willing to spend some money in the fifteenth century, the city could also have thrown a serious spanner in the works when it came to the creation of the Netherlands as it exists now. The country may not have had a northern coastline.
The city also has the highest percentage of 20 to 25-year-olds of the entire country (more than 15%).
The Reuben sandwich, TV dinner, Mannheim Steamroller and 311 were all born in Omaha. 
