1. Many like to call it by it's most famous nickname, the Big Apple, but in the past the city's name was New Amsterdam. It was later conquered by the English from the Dutch and in 1664 was given by the Duke of York to his son, as a birthday gift. But in the beginning the land upon nowadays the city lays was bought of the natives for trinkets and tools that were worth a little over 20 dollars (in today's currency would be about 1000 dollars). The best estate transaction in history: an island for some bits and pieces. It has over 8.4 million citizens. 2. It became the very first capital of the United States of America in 1789. Just for one year, but it still made history.
3. The most iconic landmark is surely the Statue of Liberty, which was a gift from France.
4. The famous New York subway is more than one hundred years old, the very first subway line having been opened in 1904. Today it is considered to be the largest mass transit system in the world, having no less than 468 stations and over 1300 km of tracks, all in all 26 routes which run 24 hours a day. If you like better the yellow taxis you should know that there are about 13000 licensed drivers in the city, and the price for such a licence is simply huge.
5. New York City has five neighbourhoods, best known all around the world from movies and novels: Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island and, of course, Manhattan.
6. You want to have a little hot-dog stand in the famous Central Park? It costs almost 300,000 dollars a year in taxes and licence costs, so you better think if it' the best business opportunity for you.
7. Until the 1950s New York City had a modern (even revolutionary for the time) pneumatic mail tube system, that worked better than even it's inventors had hoped. It proved to be more than useful for those who lived in the Big Apple, and it connected at it's heyday no less than 23 post offices, delivering over 90,000 letters a day. Unfortunatelly technical evolution made it all obsolete, but the stories about it are still a key part of local lore.
Photo: publicdomainpictures.net
