46 Amazing Facts You Didn’t Know About Cities in USA – Part 1

In the early 1920s, the KKK was very active in Chicago with 50,000 members in the city, the largest of any metropolitan area in the U.S. The group was driven from the city in 1925, when a Catholic organization, American Unity League, printed names, addresses, and occupations of Chicago Klansmen.

2. In 1983, the citizens of 15 areas in and around Dallas voted to impose a 1% sales tax on themselves in order to fund the creation of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit. It is now the longest light rail network in the US.

3. In 2015, San Jose police stopped a man from committing suicide by sending him a pizza and phone for negotiating using a bomb disposal robot.

4. Since Uber was introduced in New York City in 2011, drinking-related car wrecks decreased by 25-35% in all boroughs.

5. In an effort to reduce drunk driving, the city of Austin, Texas will waive parking tickets if a receipt showing that a ride-share company, taxi or bus was used within 24 hours of receiving the ticket.

Benjamin Franklin left the cities of Boston and Philadelphia $2,000 in his will, but they could not draw the full balance for 200 years. In 1990, the cities received $6.5 million.

7. A few years ago New York City beekeepers noticed their bees making red honey, which led to an investigation that ultimately exposed the city’s largest marijuana farm in the basement of a Brooklyn cherry factory.

8. City of Whynot in North Carolina has its name because as residents were arguing over a name for the city, some bloke stood up and said “Why not name the town ‘Why Not’ and let’s go home?” And so they did.

9. In 2016, firefighters in Pana, Illinois. found a house with cockroach infestation so massive that the city council agreed that the best option was to burn the house down.

10. The Minneapolis Skyway System is a system of footbridges that connects shops, restaurants, and residential buildings over an area of 80 full city blocks. It allows residents to live, work, and shop without ever leaving the Skyway system.

The wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men are banned in Houston for being a “blight on the aesthetic environment.”

12. Oak Ridge was a city built in the U.S. in 1942. 100,000 people lived and worked there doing very specific tasks, most of whom with no idea of what they were working towards. In 1945 they saw news reports of the atomic bombings of Japan and realized they’d been working on the bombs all along.

13. The city of Los Angeles is the 3rd most productive oil field in the U.S., but most of the oil wells are camouflaged inside of fake office buildings and even sculptures.

14. The world’s largest book was lost by the city of Cleveland. It was called The Golden Book of Cleveland; and it was as large as a mattress. It was misplaced in 1936.

15. Jacksonville, Florida, was the winter filming capital of the early US movie industry but conservative residents objected, a mayor was elected on anti-movie platform, and so the industry moved on to Southern California.

Levi’s doesn't know the significance of most of their historical trademarks, including their three-digit model numbers (e.g. 501) or the arc design stitched on their back pockets. This is because all of their records were lost with their headquarters in the 1906 San Francisco fire.

17. In 1891, Chicago issued a challenge to all engineers to build a structure that would surpass The Eiffel Tower. The engineer who won proposed a giant rotating wheel that will lift visitors high above the city. The inventor of this giant wheel’s name was George Ferris.

18. Indianapolis has a volunteer program called ‘no one dies alone’ (NODA). Their volunteers keep a continuous bedside vigil for dying people who do not have family members to visit them.

19. World’s largest concentration of nukes is housed 20 miles North West of Seattle and it is defended by trained dolphins.

20. Blue Mustang is a 32-foot tall sculpture of a blue horse at Denver International Airport. It was designed by sculptor Luis Jiménez who was unable to complete the project after the sculpture’s head fell on him and severed an artery in his leg, killing him. His staff and family finished the job for him.

Portland has started generating clean energy by replacing some water pipes with pipes that contain turbines. The turbines generate electricity from water that the city gets from the surrounding mountains. The energy generated by the system comes out of the excess pressure that they previously required other pieces of equipment to deal with. The pipes are expected to generate $2 million worth of renewable energy capacity over 20 years.

22. San Diego County Inspectors, through the use of 'Secret Shoppers', found that Target overcharges customers on 10.3% of the items they ring up; Brookstone: 10.6% and Sears: 15.7%.

23. When the city of Austin, Texas asked people online to rename their Solid Waste Services Department, the winner was “The Fred Durst Society of the Humanities and Arts.”

24. Light bulbs in the New York City subway system screw in “backwards” (i.e. with left-handed threads) so that people won’t steal them to use at home.

25. Despite it being common practice for casinos to ban card counters, a 1979 New Jersey Supreme Court decision banned all Atlantic City casinos from doing so, making them the only state in America where a casino is forbidden from throwing out skilled blackjack players.