"Cities were always like people, showing their varying personalities to the traveler. Depending on the city and on the traveler, there might begin a mutual love, or dislike, friendship, or enmity. Where one city will rise a certain individual to glory, it will destroy another who is not suited to its personality. Only through travel can we know where we belong or not, where we are loved and where we are rejected". —Roman Payne, Cities and Countries
Who doesn’t love to uncover hidden gems while they’re out in a big city? For tourists it makes them feel like locals. For locals it gives them a place to get away from tourists. Cool restaurants and eclectic boutiques aren’t the only hidden gems that are waiting to be unearthed in cities around the world. Cities have a secret life, a history that is cooler to unearth than a new brunch place. Here are 25 little known facts about the secret life of cities.
1. Plague by the Bay
Most of us remember the bubonic plague – or the Black Plague – as the event that caused 1/3 of Europe's population to vanish a long time ago. Or maybe we remember it as the topic of "Ring-around-the-rosey". Either way, we never think of the plague anywhere but medieval Europe. However, the bubonic plague didn't only affect Europe in the middle ages; in the early 1900s, it also struck San Francisco's Chinatown, leading to the demise of 119 people.
2. But Was Its Fleece as White as Snow, Though?
Some people might say the most famous person from Massachusetts is Ben Affleck, or maybe John F. Kennedy, but I would say it’s Sterling, Massachusetts resident Mary Sawyer. Maybe you’ve heard of her. She had a little lamb. Mary from "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was indeed a real person whose lamb followed her to school. It's reassuring to know that this children's poem isn't symbolizing for the Black Plague.
3. The Departed Can Ride
Just outside of New York City there’s the famous horse racing track Belmont Park. On June 4th, 1923, jockey Frank Hayes won his very first race. Too bad he didn’t live to see the end of it. Hayes had a heart attack halfway through the race, but stayed atop his horse until she crossed the finish line first. Since Hayes was still atop his horse, he did qualify as the winner of the race. To this day, Hayes remains the only jockey who has won a race while being in a lifeless state. It appears that nobody is in a rush to attempt to surpass this unusual milestone.
4. Pirate's Life for Me
Newport, Rhode Island was a main smuggling hub during the colonial period in America. Today, Newport boasts many summer homes for the wealthy, but back in the 1700s, British agents saw Newport as a seedy, filthy place filled with “a set of lawless piratical people…whose sole business is that of smuggling and defrauding the King of his duties".
5. New England Is for Smugglers
Boston, Massachusetts has many famous citizens, one such citizen being founding father John Hancock. Famous for being able to sign his name really big, what we never hear about Hancock is how he earned his wealth through smuggling. Thanks to tariffs on imports, smuggling was an important part of colonial life, and a quick way for some of the founding fathers to get rich and—like Hancock—bankroll protests against the British government.
6. Survivor
One man has been officially acknowledged by the Japanese government as surviving both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear attacks. Tsutomu Yamaguchi hailed from Nagasaki but, during a business visit to Hiroshima, he experienced the first atomic assault by the United States on Japan. After enduring one terrible ordeal, he resumed his duties at home the day the second catastrophic explosion occurred in Nagasaki. Yamaguchi survived, and went on to be a voice for nuclear disarmament.
7. Trial of the Century
The Salem witch trials are undoubtedly the most famous trials to happen in a town called Salem, and I’m not here to argue that point. I am here, though, to tell you of another famous trial that happened in a different Salem. History might not remember it, it’s not as sexy as a witch trial, but if you love spaghetti sauce, salsa, or BLTs, it’s just as important. On June 28th, 1820, Colonel Robert Gibbon defended tomatoes from libelous slander by eating a tomato on the courthouse steps outside of Salem, New Jersey. Previous to this, it was widely believed that tomatoes were poisonous and therefore couldn’t be eaten. After Gibbon proved you could eat tomatoes by, well, eating one and then not dying, people started making them into sauce and putting them on delicious sandwiches.
8. Conflict in LA
In 1942, the US army believed the city of Los Angeles was under attack by the Japanese. Acting swiftly, they sounded the alarms and started anti-aircraft fire over the city. As it turns out, the Japanese weren't actually assaulting the city, and the army attributed their heightened state of alertness in LA to "battle anxiety". Regrettably, five individuals did not survive, though it was not due to the anti-aircraft fire. Three lost their lives in car accidents, and two were so overwhelmed by the air raid they had heart attacks.
9. Bone Franklin
Benjamin Franklin once lived in London, England. Apparently though, when he left England he forgot to do something about the bodies buried in his basement. Some 200 years after Franklin moved out, over a dozen bodies were found in the basement of his old London home. While some may suspect Ben Franklin was secretly a mass murderer and that was just somehow skipped over in history lessons, researchers think it was probably just the remains from an anatomy school. This implies that Franklin wasn't a mass murderer, but he could have likely been engaging in grave looting.
10. 1 Red Balloon
Outside Klamath Falls, Oregon in 1945, a reverend and his wife were out for a drive with their Sunday school class. The Reverend Archie Mitchell pulled over when his pregnant wife Elyse began feeling ill. After they stopped, Elyse and her Sunday school class roamed around and stumbled upon something perilous and intriguing: a balloon filled with hazardous materials. Reportedly, the Japanese launched 9,000 armed balloons, and 342 reached the United States, though none had caused any injuries before. That was about to change: the balloon exploded, leading to the unfortunate demise of Elyse and five of her students. They were the only combat deaths on the US mainland for all of WWII.
11. Ring Ring Ring, Catphone
In 1929, at Prince University in Princeton, New Jersey, researchers turned a cat into a working telephone. Professor Ernest Glen Wever and his assistant opened up a cat’s skull, attached a telephone wire to the auditory nerve, and successfully used the live cat as a telephone by talking into its ear to the other person. This research, while it seems a little weird, paved the way for cochlear implants.
12. He’s Such a Nice Boy
In 1973, the Seattle law enforcement authorities praised a man for pursuing and halting a purse snatcher. That man was the infamous Ted Bundy, who soon after, embarked on his initial spree of deadly attacks. The Seattle PD was really on top of it.
13. There’s No Escape
At a small plantation outside of Manassas Junction, Virginia, the American conflict initiated in Wilmer McLean's backyard. When the Confederate and Union armies had their first major encounter near his home, McLean and his family soon fled to get away from the fighting. He moved across state to the village of Appomattox Court House. If you recognize the name of that town, it's because it's the place where the American armed conflict between the North and the South ended - and right in McLean's own house no less, as his place was designated by a Confederate Colonel for the meeting where Robert E. Lee conceded his forces. It appears as though the internal conflict was an unfortunate event McLean simply couldn't escape from.
14. It’s a B- Flag
At Lancaster High School in Lancaster, Ohio, Robert G. Heft designed the modern-day American flag as a school assignment. They had to redesign the American flag to include two more states. He received a B- for his efforts, but the teacher offered to give him a higher grade if he could get it accepted as the national flag. Heft wrote his congressmen, and lo and behold that teacher had to bump his grade up. That's right, the American flag as we know it today was created by a high school student who didn’t particularly impress his teacher with his design.
15. Winnie the Pooh
While the famous poet Lord Byron attended Cambridge University, he had a pet bear that he kept with him. Students weren’t even allowed to have dogs at the university, but to be fair–a bear isn’t a dog.
16. This Flood Is Hot, Sticky Sweet
Boston was once flooded with molasses. In 1919 on a not-so-cold winter day, a molasses tank in Boston exploded. The outcome was a flood of the sticky substance throughout the Boston area that claimed the lives of 21 people and injured 150. The molasses was waist deep in the streets. Legend has it that on hot summer days, you can still smell the molasses.
17. Too Unbelievable to Be True
At the Haymarket Theatre in London, England in 1749, a magician was supposed to take the stage to perform an impossible trick: he was supposed to be able to climb into a bottle. The feat was heavily advertised, but when no one showed up to perform and the audience realized they weren’t going to get their money back, they destroyed the theater. No one knows who started the hoax, though some believe the Duke of Montagu had staged it to win a bet that he could fill a theater by promising the impossible. If that’s true, it seems like he won.
18. Smoke Up, Ladies!
A woman was once taken into custody in New York City for engaging in a banned activity. In 1908, New York City enacted a law that forbade women (only women) from engaging in the act of inhaling and exhaling smoke within the city. The day after the law had been brought into effect, Katie Mulcahey was detained for her actions against it. Two weeks later, the city decided to overturn the restriction on women engaging in the act of inhaling and exhaling the fumes of burned substances.
19. Execution by Hanging
As the story goes, in Hartlepool, England, the townspeople once hung a monkey for being a French spy. In the legend, during the Napoleonic Wars, a French ship wrecked outside of Hartlepool and a monkey was the lone survivor. The monkey was dressed up in a uniform, because even back then people knew monkeys in people clothes were funny. Unfortunately for this monkey, the people in Hartlepool had never seen a monkey or a French person before. They promptly put the monkey on trial, and as the monkey was rudely unwilling to answer their questions due to its inherent nature, they declared a severe punishment and suspended him.
20. Buy a Ticket, Win … a Baby?
Paris, the city of love and baby raffles. Or one baby raffle to be exact. In 1911, a hospital in Paris held a raffle as a fundraiser. The prize? Babies. Orphaned children were given away as raffle prizes in the “Loterie de Bébés” in an effort to not only raise money for the hospital but to find the children homes. Presumably, the people buying raffle tickets at least knew they could be walking home with a baby. And don’t worry, the hospital did at least check to see if the homes were suitable for kids. It was a very responsible baby raffle.
21. Off to the Races
There were a lot of peculiar things that wealthy Toronto lawyer Charles Millar had in his will. In 1926, Millar's life came to an end, setting in motion a peculiar sequence of events as lawyers commenced distributing his holdings in accordance with his will. But the most unusual stipulation in Millar's will was this: Millar required that the majority of his property be converted into cash and invested, then awarded to the woman who, following my passing, has delivered the highest number of children in Toronto, as verified by the registrations under the Vital Statistics Act. This started what was called “The Great Stork Derby” as eleven families competed for Millar’s money. Four mothers eventually won $100,000 each, which is good because they each had nine kids to feed.
22. The British Are Running
There are secret tunnels under the city of Mumbai. The British, deeply concerned about potential invasions by the Dutch or the French during their colonial period, constructed underground escape tunnels beneath the city. These hidden passages have only been discovered recently. One tunnel is set up under St. George’s hospital in Mumbai, the other is under the General Post Office. Guess in the event of an attack the British would be able to get medical treatment and mail.
23. Booze Underground
The city of LA also has secret underground tunnels. Unlike Mumbai, these tunnels were used during the prohibition era so that bootleggers and smugglers could get their product to speakeasies. Seems like all the cool cities have secret tunnels these days.
24. Train’s Here
Secret tunnels aren’t the only thing you can build underground. Underneath the historic Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York City, there’s a secret train station. It's called Track 61, so move over platform 9 3/4.
25. They’ll Say Aww Topsy at My Autopsy
Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb and one of the greatest inventors of the 20th century, was an elephant killer. At Luna Park Zoo in Coney Island, Edison electrocuted Topsy the elephant, which resulted in her demise. Edison was trying to make a point about the dangers of alternating current as opposed to his method of electricity, direct current. Topsy had already been condemned by the zoo for trampling over three individuals (I'm quite convinced they brought it upon themselves - one reportedly tried to provoke her with a lit object), and Edison courageously intervened to alleviate her suffering.
Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27
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