Category: Trivia

Mi amor! Venice is “The City of Bridges” and for good reason…it has 400 of them! These bridges connect 118 small islands that make up the city. The number of canals is debatable. Some canals are too narrow to pass and some are dead ends. The number of canals is between 150 and 200 with most people saying around 177 or 178. There are no cars in the city center. Boats take the place of cars and even busses.

The small boats that traverse the canals are called gondolas and there are about 400 currently in use. There used to be as many as 10,000 gondolas in Venice. Motor boats have taken the place of most gondolas and the ones that are left are primarily for tourism purposes.

 

 

 

When the Golden Gate Bridge was under construction the military got involved. The Navy wanted to make sure that big ships wouldn’t hit the bridge. The Navy proposed it be a bumble bee design with black and white stripes. The army proposed red and yellow stripes. Other proposals were to paint it all black or all gray.

When the steel arrived to San Francisco it had a primer paint of “International Orange”. Irving Marrow, a consulting architect, had written a lengthy report on every aspect of the bridges appearance. He decided that the orange looked good and that it would be bright enough to stand out in the fog. That is when they decided to keep the color of the primer.

The Golden Gate Bridge is almost constantly being repainted due to its sheer size with every inch getting new paint every 20 years or so.

I wonder how popular the bridge would bee ? if it had a different color?

It’s “The Crossroads of the World” and the most visited tourist attraction in the world. Times Square has a great ring to it, but it used to be called Longacre Square. Longacre Square has more of a country ring to it. It reminds me of Green Acres…at least it’s close to Park Avenue.

It became known as Times Square after the New York Times moved to One Times Square in 1904.

Every year (except during the pandemic) the world famous ball drop is celebrated by one million people in person and 100 million watch on TV. The billboards on Times Square generate over $23 million a year.

If you have TIME while visiting New York check it our because most of us locals will be avoiding it.

The Chicago River is the only river in the world that permanently flows backwards. This is because of a man-made project. The city got its drinking water from Lake Michigan and the river was sending pollutants into the lake.

No one wants polluted drinking water so the city decided to reverse its course and send the pollution from the lake to the Mississippi River instead. They built a 28 mile canal between the Chicago River and rivers that drain into the Mississippi. In January 1900 when the canal was complete the river reversed course and started to pull water from the lake instead of drain into it.

Take that people down river of the Mississippi!