66 NEW YORK CURIOSITIES

Surely you know many things about the big apple ... but we bet that we surprise you with (at least) a couple of facts that you had not even thought about! Here we tell you66 curiosities of New York:

1. New York, before being named, was known as New amsterdam And this area was colonized by Dutch rather than British! The first explorer, Peter Minuit, acquired Manhattan in exchange for delivering trinkets to the Algonquin tribe ... for a value similar to $ 24 of the time.

2. Amazing huh? Especially if we think that a Manhattan apartment It has an average price of $ 1.5 million.

3. New York is one of the most cities cosmopolitan in the world: 36% of its residents were born outside the United States and almost 50% speak another language besides English.

4. New York is the most linguistically different city in the world: its inhabitants speak more than 800 different languages. If that figure seems like a lot (which it is) you're going to freak out: more than 7,000 languages ​​are spoken in the world!

5. Did you know that New York was capital of the United States? Only for one year: from 1789 to 1790.

6. Only New York City has more inhabitants than entire states! They live in it more than 8 million people 😮

7. There is only one city in the world with more skyscraper that New York: Hong Kong.

8. There is a skyscraper without windows : the AT&T Long Lines Building 😮

9. The Statue of Liberty It was donated by France in 1886 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Independence of the United States.

10. To transport it from France to Ellis Island it had to be divided into more than 300 pieces and more than 200 boxes were necessary. Once in New York it took about 4 months to put it together again.

11.Its architect was Gustave Eiffel, yes, the same as the Tower! And until 1902, the Statue of Liberty was used as a beacon.

12.Today you can see it closely for free, if you get on the orange ferry that goes to Staten island.

13.In the New York metropolitan area there are not only rats: more than 15 thousand ways of life (most of them are insects and bacteria). Rats too, of course!

14. Until after World War II, if someone wanted to change their house, they should wait until May 1: this day was the only one in which they were allowed make removals! Imagine that chaos!

15. On many of its buildings you can see large water tanks (most wood). This is because the water pressure in the pipes is quite fair, what they do is raise water to the tanks thanks to pumps and use the fall of this for use in homes.

16. But it is not the only rare system ... you have surely seen in the movies how water vapor leaves the sewers. Actually this smoke comes from the huge water vapor network which runs through many of its buildings to be used as heating.

17. New Yorkers drink a lot coffee: an average of 7 times more than the rest of Americans.

18. The most beloved parks in the city are undoubtedly the Central Park and the High Line although, in a few years, a new one may steal the hearts of many: we speak of a underground park which, according to some gossip, is going to be beautiful and very curious.

19. Brooklyn, which today is one of the 5 neighborhoods of New York, in the past it was a true city: for this reason who lives there has a strong sense of belonging. Brooklyn is cool!

20. The Indian tribes that lived in Manhattan before the arrival of the Dutch referred to it as “the island of the hills”.

21. It is prohibited touch the dick in its streets, that this restriction is respected is something else. Of course, in case of emergencies there are no problems. And no, getting home to eat hot pizza is not an emergency.

22. There are almost 13,000 taxis Legal in New York. Do you know why they are yellow? Because according to studies from the University of Chicago, this is the color that is best seen from a distance.

23. Although there are also green taxis 😮 Yes, as is, they were “born” in 2013 and can only be taken in the area north of Manhattan (between W 110th street and East 96th street), in the Bronx, in Queens, in Brooklyn and in Staten Island. They were created so that “non-tourist” areas also had good taxi coverage.

24. If you take a taxi from New York to TheAngels, the final bill would add about 17.000$. A flight is more profitable, no doubt.

25. Some of the most magical dates to visit New York (Christmas apart) are those that go from May 28 to 30 and from July 11 to 13, when the city hosts the phenomenon “Manhattanhenge”: At sunset the sun falls between the streets of Manhattan.

26. In the city that never sleeps more people are born than dies: one birth is counted every 4.4 minutes and one death every 9.

27. Near the Flat Iron Builing there are some air currents which, according to some voices, made the skirts of women rise ... never missing the voyeur men out there :-p

28. And speaking of skirts in the air ... there is a mythical place in the city: the corner of Lexington Avenue with 52nd Street, where the Marilyn Monroe skirt it was rising by the air currents of the subway grid.

29. The New York subway It has 26 lines and more than 6000 trains, opens 24 hours a day and is used by about 5 million people ... every day!

30. The city may be familiar to you: each year more than 30 200 series and movies in her. If you take a walk through its streets it will not be difficult for you to find signs in pink with and parking prohibitions: it means that they have “rented” that part of the city to record some scene. On the poster you can see the day and time, so if you are a bit of a movie geek, maybe you can go to this point to attend a shoot!

31. In New York, the paperhygienic: The one who had the great idea was Joseph C. Gayetty in 1857.

32. In the Big Apple, 40 minutes It is the average time to leave your home and get to your job.

33. The most peaceful day The city was on November 28, 2012: no altercation, theft, homicide or accident was recorded.

34. Instead, the saddest day It was definitely the 11S.

35. It was not however the New York's first terrorist attack: In 1920 a horse carriage exploded and killed more than 30 people on Wall Street.

36. Wall Street It is named that way because in 1652 there a wall was built to defend the city from possible Indian attacks.

37. The Federal Reserve Bank of Wall Street is located on 25% of all gold bullion of the world.

38. Between 1886 and 1924, more than 10 million immigrants, mostly from Italy and Ireland. The first person to be registered was Annie Moore, an Irish girl who arrived in Ellis Island on January 1, 1892. Other nationalities They have formed huge communities outside their own country: this is the case of the Chinese, the Poles or the Puerto Ricans.

39. Gastronomy is something it would be in New York: there are over 18,000 restaurants and more than 4,000 street stalls.

40. The average price of a dinner in New York it is around $ 40, without tips. Luckily there are ways to lower XD costs

41. The street stalls They are cheap but beware, their rent is not too much: to survive they need to sell a lot of food, for many hours ... one of the most expensive places to set up your street food stand is Central Park. It can cost $ 300,000 a year! That's so many puppies. Here you have more info and a very enlightening map 😮

42. One of the most loved meals ever is pizza. The first pizzeria It was opened by Gennaro Lombardi in 1895.

43. At the door of restaurants you will see a poster with a letter, depending on your level of hygiene: A: passes all controls; B: does not pass some controls, C: eat at your own risk.

44. The winters They are usually quite hard, although the worst was that of 1780 when the bay of New York froze: people could then walk through the frozen water to Staten Island!

45. The first pub The city was the McSorley's Old Ale House: it was founded in 1854.

46. ​​The Jewish communityIn addition, it is the largest outside of Israel.

47. The narrowest house The city is located in the Greenwich Village, specifically at 75.5 Bedford St: it is 2.6 meters wide!

48. More than 50 million tourists They visit New York every year.

49. But not only tourists live the city: some 800,000 companies They have trusted her to open their offices.

50. Times Square, with its luminous signs, is one of the places most loved by tourists and more hated by New Yorkers.

51. It owes its name to New York Times: Before the newspaper was established here, in 1904, Times Square was called Longacre Square.

52. Apparently, thanks to an old rental contract, the Coca Cola advertising sign It is the cheapest of all: it costs “only” one million dollars a year!

53. Central Park is not a natural park: it was artificially built to create “a green lung”On the island of Manhattan. A huge "lung": the park is bigger than the Principality of Monaco!

54. To help with its maintenance, the city council decided to “sponsor the banks”, so if you want and for a small fee, you can appear on a small insert like this:

55. The last lighthouse New York is called The Little Red Lightouse and is located under the George Washington Bridge.

56. The word Broadway, name of its longest avenue (measures 33 km) and cradle of the theaters of the city, comes from the Dutch "breede wegh" and means "long road".

57. If we add the total kilometers of the streets from New York we will obtain a distance similar to that between Lisbon and Buenos Aires.

58. The first marathon New York was developed in 1970 and there were only 127 participants. Today it is one of the most famous races in the world and every year it hosts more than 30,000 runners.

59. New York City gives its name to the state where it is located, however, the capital is not it. It is Albany, which is much smaller than NYC.

60. Many of the city's parks used to be cemeteries. This is the case of Bryant Park or Madison Square Park.

61. One of the most curious places in New York is the whispers gallery (whispering gallery), at the Central Station. Thanks to the acoustics of the room, if someone whispers something in a corner, the one in the opposite corner will receive the message ... that seems to come from just behind him.

62. The oldest building New York is located inside another building: the Dendur temple, a gift from the Government of Egypt, similar to the Debod temple in Madrid, is displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

63. One of the most mysterious buildings New York is the Dakota Building. Here, apart from John Lennon and Yoko Ono, lived a sorcerer: Gerald Brossau Gardner. They say that he could invoke dark forces and that this is why the Building is cursed.

64. Many celebrities and other rich people do not seem to care much: the Dakota Building is one of the sites most quoted from New York!

65. In the city there is a fragment of Berlin Wall: It is located in Paley Park.

66. And perhaps the greatest curiosity:Why New York is known as the Big Apple? There are several theories, although the most likely is that the origin of the term is due to the jargon of black musicians who played jazz. The "apple" would mean "city" and the big one, because the big one is what it is: big!

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