NYC, The Big Apple, The City that Never Sleeps. Whatever you want to call it, New York City is arguably one of the most recognisable locations in the world. Millions of tourists visit the city every single year, it regularly features in movies and TV shows the world over and also houses some of the most important financial and cultural institutions on the planet. But New York actually contains plenty of secrets that lurk just beneath the surface of this famous city…

In the article below, we’ve brought you 20 amazing facts you probably didn’t know about New York City. From alligators to secret escape tunnels to gigantic nuclear fallout shelters, we’ve got it all covered. Enjoy!

20. There’s a secret train station underneath the city for the President’s use only

It sounds like an urban legend, but this one is 100% true! ‘Track 61’ is a top secret railway track located underneath the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.

It was built alongside the original Grand Central Station in the late 1800s, but came to be used as a power station and storage area before being abandoned entirely. Or was it? Several US Presidents have taken advantage of the station’s secretive location by using Track 61 as an emergency escape route out of the city. Franklin Roosevelt used the station to transport his car in and out of the Waldorf Astoria garage.

A customised train car and lift was built to secretly transfer Roosevelt’s car in and out of the hotel – he often used the getaway route to hide his worsening polio condition.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush’s security team prepped the station as a quick getaway route if the former president had meetings in the Waldorf and needed to leave the hotel in an emergency. There is still an abandoned train car lying in the station to this day – historian Daniel Brucker claims it was being prepped as a presidential getaway train but FDR died before it could be completed.

So how exactly do you get into Track 61? Apparently there’s a secret entryway located near the 49th street location of the hotel, so any budding Sherlock Holmes types can go and try to find it.

The numbers “102-121” supposedly denote the exit which leads to the lift built by Roosevelt’s advisory team. You better be careful though if you fancy snooping around the ‘abandoned’ station – rumour has it that Track 61 is still being used by the White House to this day.

19. Over 25% of the world’s gold supply is located in NYC

Next time you find yourself walking around the Financial District in NYC, you might be interested to know that you’re only 80 feet away from the largest single gold supply ever accumulated in human history.

That’s right – the Federal Reserve Bank on Liberty Street currently holds a quarter of the world’s gold. The vault contains over 7,000 tons of gold bars and can only be entered via a cylindrical entryway which rotates as you turn a wheel. Although much of the gold supply is shrouded in secrecy, we do know one or two fun facts about what goes on in the depths of the vault…

Apparently if someone were to ever get trapped in the vault, there is enough oxygen to survive for up to 72 hours – phew! Employees in charge of stacking and moving the gold bars have to wear special magnesium shoe covers, just in case they accidentally drop one of those 27-pound bars. Most of the gold is owned by sovereign nations.

Rumour has it that there are 122 mini vaults lining the walls of the bank – one for each country. It’s free for a foreign government to store gold there but the bank charges $1.75 to move the gold. Check out all of that glittering stock in the picture below:

All of that gold comes in at a grand total of $250 billion. Wow! Apparently each separate brick is valued at $640,000 and the bank considers each bar as an individual, meaning that they keep special tabs on each one to make sure a customer receives the exact same bar if they want to withdraw one.

Rumour has it that the largest current account is valued at $54 billion – we wonder which country owns that tidy sum of money?! Just don’t get any ideas about trying to rob the bank – one Federal Reserve employee recently said that the attempted heist in Die Hard 2 would never have worked in reality…

18. There’s a Manhattan skyscraper with no windows that was supposed to act as a nuclear fallout shelter

Believe it or not, there’s a 550-foot skyscraper slap bang in the middle of New York City which doesn’t contain a single window!

The skyscraper located at 33 Thomas Street is also known as the ‘Long Lines Building’ and was designed in 1974 by the architect John Carl Warneke. Although it looks like the creepiest thing ever, the windowless monstrosity actually possesses a fascinating history. It was originally built to house data communications equipment and even holds some dodgy government data collection techniques (including wiretapping), which is why it was designed to withstand nuclear fallout and exist off-the-grid for up to two weeks.

Apparently the NSA still uses the building today, so you definitely won’t be able to go and look around inside. We do have some info about the inside of the Long Lines though.

Apparently it houses some extremely high ceilings and each square foot of flooring is able to hold a huge amount of weight (probably thanks to all the machines and computers inside there). In fact, the building is known as the Long Lines after the AT&T’s long distance telephone lines. The secretive building came to everyone’s attention back in 2013 when Edward Snowden claimed that the Long Lines was an NSA spying hub.

Snowden code-named the building TITANPOINTE and released papers which described it as a “a covert monitoring hub… used to tap into phone calls, faxes, and internet data.” This went against the more mundane description of 33 Thomas Street as an AT&T operating building.

In fact, AT&T was exposed as a willing partner in the NSA’s surveillance operation. Apparently the building also houses a giant ‘gateway switch’ responsible for letting phone calls in and out of the United States. Whatever goes on in there, we’re sure any employees would prefer a window or two to look out of once in a while!

17. New York’s Hog Island was never seen again after the storm of 1893

OK, so the underwater city of Atlantis might be a myth, but did you know that there’s a lost island somewhere underneath the coastline of New York?

A Category 2 storm hit the city in 1893 and the area which now houses John F. Kennedy Airport was particularly badly hit. A number of buildings were washed away in the storm, including hotels, saloons and…a one-mile-long island?! Hog Island was located just next to Rockaway Beach but suffered so badly that it was reduced to a few patches of sand by the time the storm had passed.

After ten years, the island had disappeared altogether, never to be seen again. Before its disappearance, Hog Island had been part of a peninsula known as Far Rockaway Beach. The land housed a number of amenities including several bathing houses and restaurants. It soon became a popular destination for local holidaymakers.

Many people wanted to escape the summer heat by enjoying the cool ocean breezes that ran across the sandy island even when the sun was at its hottest.

Sounds lovely!

Sadly the storm put a stop to all of that on the evening of August 23rd, 1893.

Modern-day experts now believe that the storm was a hurricane and eyewitnesses at the time recorded storm swells of up to 30 feet crashing against the shore line at Coney Island.

In fact, the storm was so violent that large parts of lower Manhattan were completely flooded and several trees were uprooted in Central Park.

However, the worst of the devastation was suffered by Hog Island, which disappeared under the sea in the years following the storm.

16. It has 722 miles of subway track…and may contain alligators

Speaking of New York’s subway, can you believe that the entire city contains over 722 miles of subway track? That’s right – the world’s largest mass transit system would stretch from NYC all the way down to North Carolina if the track was laid out in strips. Amazing! The longest line is the A line which totals 31 miles and runs from 207th Street in Washington Heights to Far Rockaway in Queens.

However, as well as being able to watch the city go by or read the newspaper, if you’re really lucky you could end up croc-spotting on NYC’s mass transit system.

In February 1935, three young men were shovelling snow into an open manhole near the subway when they claimed to have had a run-in with an alligator. Yikes! It sounds like a joke but the story was credible enough to be reported by the New York Times, so who knows? Keep an eye out for any scaly friends next time you’re waiting on a platform.

As well as alligators, people have reported seeing ghosts on the subway and there’s even a haunted platform you can go and visit if you’re feeling really brave. Many of the city’s subways have now been abandoned, leading to plenty of urban legends about who’s really lurking in the depths of NYC.

New York’s most haunted station was also one of its most beautiful subway stops of all time. The City Hall station (pictured above) is now an unused stop at the end of the 6 line. However, rumour has it that a ghost now stalks the platform.

Several workers claimed to have been hearing strange noises late at night – eventually a Native American builder of the Leni Lenape tribe realised that the spirit was speaking in a language and said that the ghost was an agitated spirit which hadn’t received a proper burial. Officials supposedly brought in a shaman to perform a ritual which allowed the ghost to rest in peace.

15. Before WWII, you could only move house in New York City on May 1st

It sounds like absolute chaos from start to finish! Moving house is never a fun task, but if you were a resident of New York in the time before World War II then it would have been the worst experience known to mankind.

The city once had a ‘moving day custom’ which originated in the Colonial Era and involved every single resident in the city moving house on one single day of the year. On February 1st, landlords would release their rent increase for the year and schedule it to take effect three months after that date. This left plenty of poorer households with a problem on their hands.

Instead of enjoying a bank holiday, the residents of New York would pack their bags ready for May 1st, which is the date when the new rent was officially due. Tenants across the city would move to their new (cheaper) addresses on the same day.

Can you imagine if that happened today?! All of the leases in New York expired at 09:00, by which time everybody who wanted to move would be out on the streets with their belongings. In 1799, one bemused observer noted that New Yorkers “are seized on the first of May, by a sort of madness, that will not let them rest till they have changed their dwelling.”

The height of Moving Day madness came in the early 20th century, when it was estimated that up to a million New Yorkers would move house at the same time. Despite growing opposition to the practice, it took the outbreak of World War II for the city to finally stop the custom.

When America joined the war, moving companies struggled to find young and able-bodied men to carry luggage. Following the end of WWII, a combination of the housing shortage and the introduction of rent control meant that Moving Day was abolished once and for all.

14. UPS, FedEx, and other delivery companies earn up to 7,000 parking tickets every day

If you think delivery vans are exempt from parking tickets then you’d be dead wrong. In New York, delivery companies collectively earn up to 7,000 parking tickets every single day!

There truly is a price for convenience, and the likes of UPS and FedEx are the ones who have to pay for it. Every year, the city of New York (which isn’t particularly known for its car parks) charges companies such as FedEx a grand total of $102 million in fines.

UPS reportedly pays the largest annual bill – the company earns an average of 15,000 parking tickets a month, which translates into an annual fee amounting to $18.7 million in 2006 alone.

That’s a hefty chunk of the company budget right there! Of course, it’s not just delivery vans who are racing up and down the streets of New York.

The city is home to more than 13,000 of those iconic yellow taxi cabs, which make an average of 800 trips every single month. Wow! America’s first ever taxis were painted red and green, so how did they end up choosing the colour yellow?

In the early 1900s, John Hertz (of the international car rental company) created the Yellow Cab Company in Chicago. He wanted to make his fleet more distinctive and asked a local university to find out which colour would be most noticeable to people from a distance. It turned out the winning colour was yellow! Cabs have come a long way since then, with most now featuring DVD screens in the back of the seats.

In fact, back in 2016 one taxi driver listed his cab as an official AirBnb accommodation. It was parked in Long Island City and contained enough room for a full-size mattress – at $39 a night, the ‘room’ was a steal!

13. New York City will house the world’s first ever underground park

Since its opening in 2009, New York’s High Line has quickly become a firm favourite amongst locals and tourists alike.

So the city decided to capitalise on the success of this converted rail line and decided to create ‘The Lowline’, a public park located underneath the streets of NYC!

This highly unusual green space will be the world’s first ever underground park and is set to be installed in an abandoned railway line by 2021. The pictures below feature an artist impression of what the Lowline will look like:

Creator James Ramsey of Raad Studio said that the Lowline, which is located in “one of the least green areas” of the entire city will become a “bright new spot” for the area.

The park will stretch over a 1.5-acre space inside the Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal, below Delancey Street which is located in the heart of Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

The location was built in 1908 and used to house disused trolleys, but now it’s going to be turned into an eco-friendly green space which will use solar technology to filter sunlight into the underground through a series of reflective surfaces.

Just to make sure that everything would work and local residents actually liked the idea, a ‘Low Line Lab’ was created by the architects in charge which simulated the environment and featured greenery and other elements of the final project. The Lab proved to be hugely popular amongst New Yorkers and the city is now waiting impatiently to see the end product. Will you take a walk on the Low Line when it’s finally finished?

Next time you fancy going for a walk in the park, you might want to step down into the underground for a breath of fresh air!

12. There’s a ‘whispering gallery’ at Grand Central Station

What’s a ‘whispering gallery’, you ask? A whispering gallery is a space usually located underneath a dome with acoustic properties that allow you to whisper anywhere around the side of the room and still be heard. This is due to the fact that the sound waves actually cling to the surface and creep along the curved path of the space.

And unbeknownst to most tourists visiting the Big Apple, there’s a whispering gallery located in one of the most famous locations in New York City.

If you go to Grand Central Station and visit the famous Oyster Bar & Restaurant, then stop and take a minute before going in for a plate of seafood.

There are several vaulted arches around the entrance to the restaurant which allow two people to stand in opposite corner to one another and hear each other perfectly, even when speaking in whispers.

Apparently the American jazz legend Charles Mingus decided to take advantage of the unusual spot and proposed to his wife by whispering to her through the walls. Awww! Plus it doesn’t matter if the station is crowded, you’ll still be able to hear whispering over the noise of the commuters.

Fans of the gallery were up in arms when it was revealed that restoration work would be performed on the building, but luckily it didn’t affect the whispering capabilities in the slightest. There are actually a number of famous whispering galleries located around the world, including a particularly cool example in the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral, London.

Next time you fancy some oysters at Grand Central, take someone special with you and whisper sweet nothings…across the wall!

11. Most of NYC’s most famous parks used to be graveyards

New York has plenty of amazing green spaces, but did you know that a huge number of them used to be graveyards rather than beauty spots?! There’s a lot of repurposed land in the five boroughs and many of the most famous parks in NYC are former grave sites.

Washington Square Park, Union Square Park, Bryant Park and Madison Square Park, are all built on the site of former cemeteries housing unknown bodies. Burials were actually forbidden south of Canal Street, Manhattan in 1823, but in the decades before that law was passed, thousands of people were interred in the area.

There are a few burial spots in NYC which have been carefully preserved over time, including Trinity Church on Wall Street and St Paul’s at Fulton and Broadway.

However, many more graveyards have simply been built over and now house playgrounds, pools and luxury apartments. Even Trump Tower is located above an old cemetery! The most famous example is Washington Square, which used to be a potter’s field. Most New Yorkers don’t realise that there are over 20,000 corpses underneath the park, several of which were recently disturbed by builders digging for utility lines. Oops!

There’s also a cemetery located under the JJ Walker playing field which once belonged to Trinity Church. It operated from 1806 to 1852 before the Church washed its hands of the bodies after losing a court battle over the land.

The City gave the relatives of anyone buried there a year to claim the body and reinstate it in a new resting place. Only 250 out of the 10,000 bodies laid to rest were ever moved, so there are still a huge amount of dead bodies lying directly under the playing field to this day.

10. New York has the biggest Chinatown in the West

Nowadays most large Western cities have a Chinatown, but New York’s is still the biggest (and arguably the best!).

In the 1800s, thousands of Chinese immigrants arrived in the Five Points neighbourhood of Manhattan and quickly started their own community in one of the worst slum areas of the city. English author Charles Dickens visited the area and noted the deprivation and poverty in one of his travel diaries, leading several middle and upper class Americans to travel through Chinatown and see the slum for themselves. After these humble beginnings, Chinatown now houses 150,000 Chinese residents across two square-miles – the largest concentration of Chinese immigrants in the Western Hemisphere!

Strangely enough, the community used to have a very uneven ratio of men to women. In 1900, there were only 36 married women to every 4,000 men.

That’s quite the gender imbalance! After 1882 it was nearly impossible for any non-upper class Chinese people to enter the US, but things were even trickier for single women who were often seen as prostitutes. Hence single, unemployed Chinese women struggled to enter the country after officially being barred from entry in 1875. Funnily enough, this same gender imbalance meant that Chinese immigrants made their wealth out of doing ‘women’s work’ e.g. cleaning clothes, cooking food.

Chinatown also has a history of gang violence, especially at the start of the 20th century. There were so many gang shootings in Doyers Street that the area became known as the Bloody Angle – more people died of violent crime there than in any other street intersection in the United States.

Woah! Also, if you’ve ever wondered how Canal Street got its name, the road used to be a highly inefficient canal running through the heart of the Chinese immigrant district. Unfortunately it ended up becoming an open sewer and was eventually filled in by the government due to hygiene reasons.

9. It’s also the first city to have a ‘Little Britain’

As well as Chinatown, NYC has an up-and-coming ‘Little Britain’ neighbourhood for its friends across the Atlantic!

Most large cities have a little China or Little Italy (NYC certainly does), but it’s very rare to come across a whole area devoted to British culture. However, a small cluster of shops located in and around Greenwich Avenue in the West Village have started catering to their Brit friends with plenty of famous haunts being frequented by British celebrities such as Kate Moss and Richard Branson.

There’s a famous cafe called ‘Tea & Sympathy” which boasts well-known customers from across the Atlantic, including David Bowie and Joanna Lumley. Kate Moss has reportedly been a regular at the tea shop for over 17 years, so if you’re an Anglophile in New York then it’s definitely a great place to go celeb hunting!

The cafe serves traditional bangers n’mash, Yorkshire pudding and rhubarb crumbles, plus a bit of Welsh rarebit for any red dragons out there. Of course, the most popular dish by far is the traditional British afternoon tea served with scones, jam and clotted cream.

Myers of Keswick is another famous venue in Little Britain, owned and run by Peter Myers who hails from Keswick in England’s beautiful Lake District.

Any Brits abroad will be pleased to hear that they can buy all their favourite home brands including Walkers crisps and McVities biscuits for their afternoon cup of tea.

Millionaire Richard Branson is such a fan of the area that he’s currently trying to get the neighbourhood officially recognised by the City of New York. The locals know it as Little Britain anyway – it’s surely just a matter of time!

8. The Empire State Building once had an entire floor dedicated to napping

Sounds like a great place to work! The Empire State Building is one of the most famous buildings in the world, let alone New York.

But there’s still so many things that the average person might not know about this iconic monument. Apparently, the Empire State Building – which is still one of the busiest office blocks in the world – used to have an entire floor dedicated to napping. In 2004, the building owners decided to look after their sleepy staff and created a sleep zone on the 24th floor of the building which contained special sleeping pods so that people could go and relax.

The area was there from 2004 until 2008, when office workers could chillax to soothing audio recordings and enjoy some nice comfy cushions before dozing off for a while.

We thought New York was the city that never sleeps?! Sadly the franchise was forced to shut down in 2008 when the Empire State Building owners changed their policy on visitors to the office block. And that’s not the only fun fact we managed to uncover about the iconic skyscraper. Did you know that the Empire State Building is so large that it has its very own zip code?

The tower used to belong to the 10001 Manhattan zip code which covers the area from 25th Street to 35th Street (located east of Fifth Avenue). Eventually the building decided that it wanted a special zip code to match its unique status in the New York skyline and decided to take the exclusive 10118 code instead.

Only the Empire State Building possesses this code. At 103 storeys tall, the Empire State Building took only one year and 45 days to build after being created as part of a race to construct the world’s tallest building. Unsurprisingly, it won!

7. A slice of pizza has always been the same price as the subway

Fancy a ride on the subway? If you’re not sure how much it costs then why not try looking at the receipt for your New York slice.

Economists have discovered that the price of a slice of a pizza has nearly always matched the cost of a single subway ride, a phenomenon which has come to be known as the ‘Pizza Principle’.

Each time economists have noted that the average price of pizza increases, this is followed shortly afterwards by a hike in transit costs – weird! All this pizza talk is making us hungry…

Apparently just over 500,000 pizzas are eaten in New York City every. Single. Day. New Yorkers love their pizza and supposedly order 5 million slices a year, with pepperoni being the most popular flavour.

NYC is also home to the most expensive pizza in the world, which is located in Nino’s Bellissima Pizza in Manhattan. They have a white truffle, lobster and caviar pizza which costs a whopping $1,000! Think how many slices of pepperoni you could buy with that kind of money…

Thankfully it doesn’t cost $1,000 to ride on the subway though (yet).

The latest Pizza principle hike came in 2005 and then 2007, when the price of a New York slice steadily increased. Only a few months later, the fare rose to $2.25 and then again to $2.50.

Economists were worried that the eradication of the subway token and the introduction of MetroCards would mean that the correlation between subway and pizzas would no longer hold. But their concerns were unfounded and the Pizza-Subway connection continues to exist to this day. Yum!

6. There are tiny shrimp-like creatures called copepods in the city’s drinking water

This fact is definitely not one for the faint-hearted! Whilst visitors to the Big Apple might not notice anything different about the taste of the local drinking water, there’s something slightly suspicious lurking in those taps.

Apparently the water contains a secret ingredient to give it some extra, er, protein. Microscopic crustaceans named copepods (which are known to feed on mosquito larvae) swim around in the water. Ugh! Scientists have assured people not worry because apparently the copepods are completely clean, but somehow that doesn’t make us feel any better.

Apparently there’s no getting away from the tiny creatures either – they’re lurking in every glass of tap water in New York City. Unfortunately this poses a problem for the city’s large Jewish community. The copepods are crustaceans, which means that they aren’t kosher for New York’s Orthodox Jewish population.

Apparently the tiny critters have gathered in NYC thanks to its excellent drinking water, meaning that you can also find them in other places around America which are home to super natural water supplies. Which will make you think twice before enjoying a healthy glass of H2O.

You won’t have noticed them before because they are only 1 to 2 millimetres in length and are almost completely transparent. Sneaky! They live in the freshwater habitats such as reservoirs that supply public drinking water to cities such as New York.

Don’t let this put you off drinking tap water though – the creatures are perfectly safe and don’t do any harm to human beings. Unless you’re Orthodox Jewish, in which case it might be time to start buying bottled water.

5. It was supposed to be home to the world’s tallest ferris wheel

Following hot on the heels of the London Eye, cities around the world began creating their own gigantic ferris wheels to lure in the tourists. New York was no different and architects began plans for a wheel which would measure a whopping 630 feet and had been given the appropriate name ‘The New York Wheel’.

It was supposed to be the tallest ferris wheel in the world but was recently beaten to that title by the Ain Dubai wheel which measures 689 feet. Located in Staten Island, the New York wheel would have provided panoramic views of famous landmarks.

Visitors who don’t suffer from a crippling case of vertigo would be able to enjoy the best views of the New York Harbour, which looks out onto the Statue of Liberty and that iconic New York skyline.

However, developers announced in October 2018 that they will no longer be going through with the plans after the wheel failed to draw support from local residents. The architects hoped to put Staten Island on the tourist map but were forced to scrap their plans last month after a series of legal battles with suppliers scuppered their vision once and for all. Bizarrely, the wheel has been cancelled despite the fact that builders first broke ground over two years ago.

The concrete foundations have already been laid and the giant legs have been delivered to the site, so it’s currently unknown what will happen to them now.

The tallest wheel in America is the Las Vegas High Roller which measures in at 550 feet – if the New York wheel had been completed it would have completely eclipsed its West Coast rival. Unfortunately it looks as though NYC has been beaten to the race of world’s tallest ferris wheel…for now!

4. In 2012, the city celebrated its first violent crime-free day in living memory

New York’s Finest famously had something to celebrate about in 2012, when they failed to receive a single call about a murder, stabbing, shooting or other form of violent crime.

This was the first time in the history of New York City that an entire 24 hour period passed without a reported incident of violence. Despite its reputation, crime levels in the city have been falling since the early 90s. And the city recently managed to go one better than its 2012 record with a crime-free weekend in April 2018 which saw not a single murder occur for three days from Friday to Sunday.

NYPD homicide squads were twiddling their thumbs for a whole three days this year! Mayor Bill de Blasio recently celebrated the news with a graduating class from the city’s police academy.

“Friday, Saturday and Sunday there was not a single shooting in all of New York City,” de Blasio told the new recruits. “Isn’t that amazing?” This achievement is particularly impressive when you consider just how high NYC’s crime rate used to be. After all, there’s a good reason why so many cop dramas are set in the East Coast city! So what was the most violent period in New York’s history?

At one point in the late 80s, Brooklyn’s 75th precinct was experiencing a homicide every 22 minutes. Jaded policemen and women hung a sign in the building reading: “You give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you a homicide.”

Officers also blew a whistle every time a new murder was reported, with one retired Inspector stating “Some nights, it got real noisy in the office.” One of the worst murder rampages in history came in 1993, when somebody in the area from East New York to Cypress Hills was killed on average every 63 hours.

3. Coney Island’s beach was named after Brighton, England

Coney Island is a rite of passage for any youngster growing up in New York. But did you know that it actually has some very English roots?

NYC was taken over by the English from the 1660s and Coney Island soon became a popular holiday destination. In the 1830s, tourism increased after a bridge was built between the area and New York City. Soon Brighton Beach appeared in 1878 to capitalise on the visitor trade – it was named after the popular coastal town of Brighton in the South of England. Like Coney Island, Brighton was popular with Londoners wanting to get away from the city.

The English settlers in New York clearly wanted a slice of home away from home, because they also built a grand hotel named the Hotel Brighton, as well as a pavilion which payed homage to Brighton’s Royal Pavilion back in the UK.

Coney Island also has a boardwalk and pier which resembles its sister city in England. The boardwalk was constructed by Brooklyn Borough President Edward Riegelmann after one million people started congregating on the beaches and causing congestion! It later became known as ‘Coney Island’s Fifth Avenue’ and opened in 1923.

If you’ve ever visited Coney Island, then you’ve probably paid a visit to the Wonder Wheel. But did you know that it was originally built as a wedding present?! In 1948, a Greek immigrant named Denos Vourderis promised that if his future wife Lula married him, he would buy the Wheel for her as a wedding present.

Vourderis kept his word and worked his way up from a humble hot dog vendor to the owner of the Wonder Wheel. His son Steve looks after the wheel to this day and it’s still a popular spot for wedding proposals!

2. It was the Hollywood of the East

Hollywood definitely took over the film industry in the 1930s, but before that the East Coast was the centre of America’s movie business.

Most major film companies operated in New York before Hollywood became a thing, including Paramount Pictures, which is the fifth oldest film company in the world!

Paramount shot several successful movies in the Big Apple, including the first ever Sherlock Holmes film with sound recording. Many of their movies were produced at the Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, which have now been declared an official historic district.

The studio was revived in the 1970s when a series of successful movies were shot there, including Goodfellas and Carlito’s Way. The Kaufman Astoria also housed a number of hugely popular TV series such as Sesame Street and The Cosby Show.

Some very famous faces have also grown up right outside the studios – Christopher Walken was born and raised on the streets of Astoria and has since become one of the most prolific film actors of all time! Edward Ford, the New York Yankees pitcher, and Tony Bennett were also born in Astoria.

Sitting next to the movie studios is the Museum of the Moving Image, which is America’s only museum dedicated to the history of the moving image. It houses over 130,000 film artefacts and is definitely a must-see for any film buffs out there.

And last but not least – the film industry on the East Coast has always been lucky enough to have NYC’s Central Park on its doorstep. Central Park has featured in more movies than any other location in the world. It has appeared in over 300 films since 1908, when it first cropped up in a movie version of Romeo and Juliet.

1. In 1857, toilet paper was invented by New York resident Joseph Gayetty

And last but not least – we have a New Yorker to thank for the invention to toilet roll! OK, so the first ever documented use of toilet paper actually originates in early medieval China…

But the toilet roll that we all know and love today was only commercially available to Americans from 1857 onwards. This was the year that Joseph Gayetty of Gayetty’s Paper invented a product which he called ‘Gayetty’s Medicated Paper’ – the toilet paper was sold in packs of flat sheets until the late 1920s, by which time paper had entirely switched over to the more familiar rolls.

Before Gayetty’s invention, China was the only country in the world where toilet paper was readily available. For many centuries Westerners were stuck using a combination of water, sticks, sand, leaves and even animal furs to attend to their business before Gayetty decided to make commercial toilet paper.

Thank goodness for Joseph! Unfortunately Gayetty didn’t market his product effectively enough and it took three brothers – Thomas, Edward and Clarence Scott – tco make toilet paper a hit with the global market in 1867.

Did you know all of these fascinating facts about the city of New York? We had no idea that NYC had so many secrets just below the surface. Next time you visit, you can try spotting alligators on the subway or have a go at finding the secret presidential train station underneath the Waldorf Astoria!

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