20 Facts About Amazing Little Towns Around the World

Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! in Quebec, Canada, is the only town in the world with two exclamation points in its name.

The town of Why, Arizona was originally to be named "Y" because two major highways, State Routes 85 and 86, originally intersected in a Y-intersection but the state requires at least 3 letters in its city names.

There is a town named Coria del Río in Spain where 700 people are descended from a 17th-century samurai who stayed there after an embassy returned to Japan. They have the surname "Japón", which was originally "Hasekura de Japón."

The town of Larkhall, Scotland, hates the color green so strongly that their Subway is painted black instead.

The town of Lauderhill, Florida was supposed to present actor James Earl Jones with a plaque for their annual Martin Luther King celebration. The company in charge of making it printed the name "James Earl Ray" on it. James Earl Ray was the man who killed Martin Luther King.

There is a town named Viganella in the Alps that does not get any direct sunlight for 84 days. However, the town fixed that by installing a giant mirror on the side of the mountain.

There is an underground town in the Australian outback called Coober Pedy. Half of its population lives below ground to escape the area's high temperatures.

In 1932, a small Austrian town named Wörgl greatly reduced unemployment by issuing a new currency that would automatically lose 1% of its value for each month that it went unspent. Hundreds of towns in the U.S. set up similar systems, but in 1933 President Roosevelt outlawed them.

There is a ghost town named Kitsault in northern British Columbia, Canada that was abandoned almost overnight in 1983. Everything is still there and the power is still on. The whole town was purchased by an American who wants to turn it into a resort for intellectuals.

Lunik IX, a borough of the Slovakian city of Košice has a poverty rate so high that unemployment is close to 100%. Gas, water and electricity service has been cut off for the entire area, and bus drivers receive hazard pay for taking routes through the district.