New York City is a city that will take your breath away. Countless of unforgettable stories were written on its great avenues. We present 20 incredible facts about the Big Apple which you may not yet know.
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The New York Public Library has over 50 million books and other items and is the second largest library system in the nation after the Library of Congress. It is also the 3rd largest library in the world.
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The listed train departure times at are wrong. Each train leaves a minute later than indicated, so commuters have a little extra time to catch their train. Grand Central also has a “whispering gallery”. If two people stand at opposite arches, you can whisper to one another and still be heard.
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If a homeless New Yorker dies and cannot be identified, he is buried on Hart Island in the East River using prison labor. The island is a cemetery of countless unmarked graves.
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In 1945, a B-25 bomber plane crashed into the Empire State Building at the 79th floor.
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New York subway was opened in 1904 and nowadays it represents the largest mass transit system in the world with 468 stations. The best thing about the subway is that it runs 24 hours a day, making the life of New Yorkers much easier. Approximately 5 million people use the subway every day.
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In 1926, New York City launched a cabaret law that requires any place that serves food or drink to get an additional permit to allow dancing. Without this license, it was illegal to dance on the premises and the law is still in effect today.
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It is not illegal for women to go topless in the city.
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With the decline of rail travel at the end of the 1940s, in 1954 there were plans to demolish Grand Central Terminal and replace it with an 80-story office tower that would be taller even than the Empire State Building. But with much protest and after Grand Central became a Historic Landmark, the station was saved and the Pan Am/Met Life building built instead.
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There are more beauty salons in New York than parking lots, garages, laudromats and dry cleaners.
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Madison Square Park, Union Square Park and Washington Square Park used to be cemeteries.
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Wall street earned its name in the 17th century, when the Dutch built a wall to protect themselves from attacks by pirates and Native Americans.
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Each member of the Beatles has performed at Madison Square Garden, but they’ve never performed there as a group.
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New York City is home to America’s first pizzeria, opened in 1905 by Gennaro Lombardi.
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There is a secret art gallery in an abandoned subway station in Williamsburg that is illegal to enter. It is known as the Underbelly Project.
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25% of the world’s gold bullion is stored in vaults under Wall Street (the Federal Reserve Bank).
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Invisible, harmless shrimp called copepods live in New York City’s water supply.
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If the state of New York were its own country, its economy would rank 15th in the world, being slightly smaller than the economies of Canada and Spain. New York’s economy ranks 3rd in the United States, after California and Texas.
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In 1901, New York was the first state to require all automobiles to have license plates. However, the plates were not issued by the state but were made by the owner and were required to have the owner’s initials.
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New York City is the most linguistically diverse city with over 800 languages spoken, and 4 in 10 households speak a language other than English.
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From 1886 to 1924, over 14 million immigrants entered through New York harbor into the United States. About 40% of Americans can trace at least one ancestor to Ellis Island.
