Question Interesting things about where you live

Since we're quite geographically spread out, there's probably quite a few interesting tidbits of information about your local area (not necessarily your exact town / street!) that others may possibly find interesting - maybe even stuff that Not A Lot Of People Know...

I'll start...

Warwickshire, in the English Midlands, is practically dripping with history. Starting in the South, we've got Stratford-upon-Avon, where a chap called Bill wrote a few moderately successful plays (understatement of the century!). Needless to say, as the town's a tourist trap, make sure you've got deep pockets if you want to visit the various properties - the Birthplace Museum alone costs nearly £20 (~$30), although you can probably get discounts if you want to visit multiple properties around town.

Heading up the main road, you come to Warwick, the county town. The town centre (roughly equivalent to what the US would call the Central Business District) is fairly small and quaint, with more independent retailers than average and plenty of stone / half-timbered buildings. There's also the Castle, one of the few intact ones in the UK, run by Merlin Entertainments (who also operate Blackpool Tower, Madame Tussauds and Alton Towers theme park) - needless to say, while you could easily spend an entire day there (plenty of exhibitions, the ramparts walk, and regular shows including jousting, falconry and the launching of one of the largest trebuchets in the world - with fireballs launched in the evening show), you're looking at £20 plus any food you buy on-site.

Further north, there's the ruin of Kenilworth Castle - previous owners include King John (of Magna Carta fame) and Robert Dudley (one of Elizabeth I's favourite courtiers, who had a rather bad case of unrequited love for her, including spending the equivalent of millions of pounds/dollars on a huge extension to house her for a four day visit), it used to be surrounded by a huge lake (drained by Cromwell's troops, but some of the banks can still be traced and what would have been the bottom is still quite boggy in places), with the dam doubling up as a tiltyard.

Another 6 miles North is Coventry - home of Jaguar Cars (plus various other marques that have disappeared), plus no fewer than three Cathedrals - the earliest was founded by Lady Godiva and her husband but slighted by Henry VIII, the next was originally the parish and guild church, but succombed to the Luftwaffe, and there's a modern Cathedral bridging the two earlier ones. Oh, and speaking of Godiva, contrary to popular belief (and the tourist trade), the most infamous tax protest in history is almost certainly fiction - the first accounts appearing several hundred years later, and Peeping Tom got added to the legend several hundred years after that. Head East and you encounter the town of Rugby, where the first form of football that involves carrying a prolate spheroid around the pitch rather than kicking a sphere was first codified (although they'll try and convince you it was a local schoolboy - William Webb Ellis - who first decided to pick up the ball and run with it).

Finally, North of Coventry, there's Nuneaton, where a lady called Mary Ann Evans wrote a few novels - albeit due to the patriarchal society at the time, did so under the pen name of George Eliot to attract a larger audience.

Well, there is probably a lot of interesting things about Ontario and the Greater Toronto area, like Southern Ontario is the ice wine capital of the world. and Toronto has one of the larger Gay pride parades every year. But Most of them are likely not of general interest.

But the first thing that popped into my head when I read your thread is that they are going to be filming the next Star Trek TV show in Toronto. It's supposed to be on TV next year.

ha where do I start!

I live in Los Angeles and work in the film biz! So its just better to ask what I have 'not' seen, than what I have seen? lol

but to all the fan fic authors ask me any questions you need for background on your stories, that maybe based here!

Living on the shore of Lake Superior in Northwestern Ontario (aka Barren, mosquito infested wasteland) you'd think there wasn't much to talk about here. In an area that's about the size of Germany we had at our peak 1 million people.

40 minutes from my hometown was the largest gold reserve in the world. It was mined out of high and medium quality gold between 1980 and 2015.

Silver Isle, about 2 hours west, is an artifical island built on a rock that was submerged during mild storms. In the late 19th century and early 20th century it was one of the best silver mines in North America. During bad storms waves would batter the sides of the workers barracks, and it had to be closed down in winter because it was impossible to get food and alcohol to the island.

During WW2, there was a prisoner of war camp in what is now Neys Park. A number of people escaped from it, only one POW made it to a town where he was captured. The rest disappeared (probably dead) or were found begging for food half eaten by bugs. Rumours tell of some German speaking white men being found years and decades later living with Native Americans and working as loggers.

The real Winnie the Pooh's hometown is actually White River, an hours drive away from my hometown. A black bear cub was found there and given or sold to a soldier from Winnipeg.

Almost 400 ships have sunk in Lake Superior, the largest lake in the world. This doesn't count canoes and personal boats, just commercial vessels. More than any other lake in the world.

Four hours east of my town, in what is now Sault St. Marie, the first battle of the War of 1812 took place, at Fort Michilimackinac. It was bloodless and largely done by Native Americans supporting the British and lead by Voyageurs (fur traders).

In Thunder Bay is the largest recreated historical fort in the world, Old Fort Williams, it employs hundreds of actors who pretend to be fur traders, workers, British soldiers, Native hunters and villagers, etc, every summer.

During the Second Northwest Rebellion, the Canadian Pacific Railway was not yet complete, having run out of money and stopped by the bogs and rocky hills of Northwestern Ontario. As it was winter time, workers and soldiers put railway tracks right on the ice and snow to get the train carrying supplies and solders from Eastern Canada to the fighting. Clearing trees as they did it, it was done in record time, less than a month if I remember correctly, German engineers watched this and took notes as nothing like it had ever been done before.

There is more freshwater in this part of Ontario than most of the world.

At the turn of the century the nearest cities Port Aurthur and Fort Williams (which were a few miles apart and hated each other) had about 15 bars for every church. It was considered the most vice ridden place in Canada.

In many towns along the Canadian Pacific Railway, houses were built right on the edge of the tracks. People would sell things to passengers when the train stopped for coal and water, engineers would steal pies and bread from windows as the train went past, and brothels were very plentiful and open to travellers.

It is one of the few areas in the world where the climate goes from coastal to subarctic within a few kilometers, in some places as little as one kilometer, depending on the local geography. Lake Superior is also the only lake with noticeable tides.

White Fish used to be a commercial fish that was caught and sold by ocean like trawlers. They were fished out by the 1950's, and now only limited commercial fishing occurs.

I'm a California boy, from the Los Angeles area. Specifically, I hail from the San Fernando Valley, which is the "Valley" in "Valley Girl". (There are several other valleys in the area, but the San Fernando Valley is the only one that is "The Valley".

In the Valley, I'm in the district of Chatsworth, which was (and possibly still is, but I don't keep track of these things) the porn capital of the world.

okay I will let you have some stuff on my home town or used to be

Pasadena...yep that one the one with the parade! or AKA known to the locals "WHY beer prices jump for a week!" Damn tourists!

we have the original Bush gardens ...yes the beer ones! and you can still find parts of it here, if you know where to look
then we have the bunny museum and the banana museum! Then those other ones, with all that art crap!
or the haunted hill nearby, where a car rolls up hill!
and there is a nuke reactor under cal-tech we are not to talk about? whoops!

Hmmm. I live near a closed US Airbase where the 99th Pursuit Squadron (the Tuskegee Airmen) was first activated.

Fifteen miles down the road or so computer RPGs were invented, along with the Mosaic web browser,

A further 50 miles down the road on of the first US Pro Football teams was formed.

When one's home (US) state has its own news category , it's hard to be sure just what other folks might find "interesting". A discussion of local flora and fauna, including the known and suspected invasive species usually devolves into an adverse comparison to Australia (the spiders and snakes are generally less venomous, the plants ... if you're told not to stand under a certain tree , DON'T)

I live in the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere, the most important financial center in Latin America (and also home to a very large slum-dwelling population, so it's not all roses by any measure), a place with a vibrant cultural life, with theaters, musical shows, fairs, world-class restaurants from about a hundred different ethnicities, the largest and most important Brazilian university and about two dozen other unis and colleges... and pretty much fail to make use of any of it.

Well I can't really compete with some of the places mentioned above but within a twenty mile radius of the south coast town in which I live there are the following sites of interest.

1] Pevensey Bay - Where the Normans are supposed to have landed in 1066 and where what is believed to be the first Castle in Britain built by the Normans is still standing.

2] Bexhill-on-Sea - Home of the first organised motor racing event in the UK.

3] Battle - Supposedly the site of the historic Battle of Hastings in 1066. (Recent Archaeological research has begun to cast some doubt on how accurate the popular information may be).

I'm sure there are several more sites of interest but that's all I can think of right now.

John.

The coolest place (IMO) I know of in the LA area is (are?) the La Brea Tar Pits. It's also one of the most redundantly named, since La Brea translates to "The Tar"

The The Tar Tar Pits are a group of asphalt lakes (yes, not only is the name redundant, it's also technically inaccurate), where underground petroleum has seeped to the surface over time, trapping and preserving animals, and creating enormous collections of well preserved fossils. The La Brea Tar Pits trapped animals from the most recent ice age.

There is still active excavation going on at the La Brea Tar Pits Museum, which visitors can observe. In 2006, LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) was constructing an underground parking garage when they discovered a new cache of fossils. They discovered it when construction equipment ran over the top of a mammoth skull. But they could hardly pause construction while they excavated the area, so they imaged the area to find all the major fossil deposits, then carved out those deposits in 23 giant blocks and hauled the blocks over to the museum where they could be excavated at their leisure. They're still excavating Project 23 (which is why LACMA didn't want to wait for them before getting their parking garage). The mammoth that got run over is nicknamed Zed, and his skeleton is almost 80% complete, which is rather good as fossils go.

It's a little terrifying, actually. Some of the blocks in Project 23 are taller than a person, and in addition to the bones of mammoths and other large animals, they sift through the asphalt for fossils so small you need a microscope to find and identify them.

I grew up about an hour away from Duluth, Minnesota, and one of the cool things they have there is the SS William A. Irvin. It's a roughly 600 foot long retired freight ship turned museum, and a lot of schools in the area have field trips to Duluth to tour the ship. And in October, they transform it into a haunted ship.

Duluth is also home to the Aerial Lift Bridge, which isn't really special in the grand scheme of things, but it's a very iconic part of Duluth.



I lived in Georgia for a while, and one of the big attractions not too far from us was Stone Mountain. Stone Mountain is exactly what it says on the tin: a rock that rises 825 feet above the ground and is more than five miles in circumference (and the underground portion is even bigger). It also has the world's largest bas-relief carved into its side, featuring a few confederate assholes. This naturally offends some people, so there have been petitions to make it more inclusive. In the summer, they do laser shows on top of the carving, which can be pretty neat the first time you see it. Gets old when your family tries to make seeing it a recurring event, though.

Near the mountain is a park which features a number of boring things. One of the less boring things is a recreation of an 1872 town that's neat to walk around in, and they have a glass blower. I love watching glass blowing.

But my favorite part about Stone Mountain -- at least, when I was a kid -- was the Great Barn. It's got all kinds of stuff to climb on, some trampoline floors, slides, and a bunch of mounted turrets you can use to fire foam balls at people. There were also a bunch of stations that accepted the balls and put them into conveyor belts and stuff that would move them around and eventually dump them into a barrel that would spill them out once it was full. For doing this you were awarded points via an armband with an RFID chip, and high scores got your name on a scoreboard. I don't remember if you could actually win anything, but still it was still a lot more fun than all the other stuff.

ohh ya had to add this on Pasadena!

we founded the cheeseburger!

www.visitpasadena.com/events/pasadena-cheeseburger-week/

Whilst originally from Scotland, i've been based in London for the last 25 years.

It's an old city.

Old, as in remnants of neolithic pottery-making old, ~6500 years ago.

The people then, are pretty much the same as the people now. Different flavour of technology, but still the same silly behaviour.

The stories from history are chewier/scarier because they're real...