Did you know that the symbol of Warsaw is a mermaid? According to local legends the mermaid was one day swimming in the Vistula River, when she was captured by a rich and evil merchant. As he wanted to keep the mermaid as a strange collector's item, she started crying and begging to be released. In the end a brave fisherman released the mermaid - according to some variants they were also married - and the mermaid swore to always protect the city. There are over 1200 fountains in Zurich, many of those being decorated with beautiful stone and metal sculptures.
What was the original name of the city of Los Angeles? Careful, it could be quite the tongue-twister - El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora Reina de los Angeles sobre el Rio Porciuncula. This was of course before it became an American city.
Unusual laws around the globe? How about the fact that you can not have a mongoose in Honolulu? Surely there is some fascinating story behind the fact that somebody once felt the need to have a law about that.
The city of Philadelphia has a long and rich history, and several firsts for the USA - it was here that the first bank, the first hospital (in 1751) and the first American Zoo were opened; it was in Philadelphia that the first daily newspaper was published, in 1784 - 1790, and who knows what an issue of the Philadelphia Packet and Daily Advertiser would be worth to a collector today; here you could borrow books from the very first public lending library; and in this city was founded the University of Pennsylvania, the first of it's kind on American soil. Not to mention the fact that you can see here the legendary Liberty Bell.
Most of the old city of Lisbon was destroyed in 1755, when it seemed that here had begun the end of the world. First there was a massive earthquake, in 1755, followed by several devastating fires which simply razed most of the wooden structures, topping it all with a tsunami. It was like the town was never there, and it would take a lot of work to build it back again.
Photo: wikipedia.org
