Is Your Hometown Famous For Anything?

[Psycho Circus]

Reading Trevor's "name of your town/city" thread gave me this idea. We've all discussed where we are from but don't know that much about each of our particular parts of the world.


I'm from Manchester, England:

It is the third-most visited city in the UK by foreign visitors.
Manchester was the world's first industrialised city.
The Atom was split in Manchester.
Is home to football teams, Manchester City (my club) and Manchester United.
The city was bombed during WWII in the "blitz", then again in 1996 by the IRA.
The Manchester Arndale is the UK's largest shopping mall.
The M.E.N. Arena is the largest indoor sports/entertainment venue in Europe.

Famous musicians from the city include; Joy Division/New Order, The Smiths, Oasis, The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, The Buzzcocks, The Hollies, Herman's Hermits, Simply Red, Take That and The Bee Gees.


What's your hometown/city known for? Anyone famous from where you dwell? Landmarks? Music scene?

[Doggett]

I'm in Harrow.
It's a London borough. There are 32 of them ! Take that NY !

It's famous for...seriously...erm...Buckingham Palace ?
History Museum
Houses of Parliament
The Tate Modern
Westminster Abbey
Madame Tussuad's
The London Eye. Biggest ferris wheel in the world apparently. I think it should be further down the river. It looks kinda out of place by all the old victorian buildings.

It's the biggest city in Europe
Highest population density in the UK
More than 12 percent of the UK population lives here. Can't blame 'em.

[BeyondTheGrave]

Queens has a lot of pioneers in music scene and other legends especially rap/hip-hop and punk/hardcore. Run-DMC, Ramones, Gorilla Biscuits, Nas, Mob Deep, Token Entry, Reagan Youth and many more have come from here.

We also have the two major airports and only airports in NYC, JFK and La Guardia.

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Indian_Runner
This was filmed there. 

http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/john_joubert/photo.html
And this happened. 

-Ed

[Raffine]

From the Wikipedias:
Sylacauga is the site of the only documented case of an object from outer space hitting a person. On November 30, 1954, a 4 kg piece of what became known as the Hodges Meteorite crashed through the roof of an Oak Grove house, bounced off a radio, and badly bruised Mrs. Ann Hodges, who was taking an afternoon nap.

[asimpson2006]

Here is what Mechanicsburg, PA is known for:

-The lead singer and drummer from Poison grew up here.

-Jon Ritchie a former NFL player, we graduated from the same HS, albeit different years (For him I think he graduated in 92 or 93, and me in 04.)

- Jubilee Day (This Thrusday) the single largest block party on the East Coast.  Usually brings in around 60,000 for the day, which includes people from all over the world who visit.

- Williams Grove Speedway, a 1/2 mile dirt track that a lot of famous drivers in American auto racing have won at.  Everybody and anybody wants to win here.

[WingedSerpent]

I live in Parma, a suburb or Cleveland.
Famous for: The Blue Light of Parma. (MonsterQuest did an episode that mentioned it.)
Being mentioned in the original opening song to the Drew Carey Show

Cleveland:
LeBron James
The Browns and their "Amazing" winning record
The Cleveland Indians: and thus the Major Leauge movies.

The Cleveland Zoo reportely has one of the largest collections of bears and primates of any Zoo in the USA.

Marvel's Howard the Duck calls it home.

Movies filmed hear include Double Dragon, and some scenes from Air Force One, and Spider-Man 3.

oh, our river once caught on fire

[Hammock Rider]

Cicero IL has quite a sterling reputation:

Al Capone built his criminal empire in Chicago before moving to Cicero to escape the reach of Chicago police.

Town President Betty Loren-Maltese was sent to federal prison for misappropriating funds . She was well-liked by retired, long-term Cicero residents, but was continually challenged by younger Hispanic opponents before her indictment.

Cicero was taken up and abandoned several times as site for a civil rights march in the mid-1960s. The American Friends Service Committee, the Rev. Martin Luther King, and many affiliated organizations, were conducting marches against housing and segregation and inequality in Chicago and several suburbs, but the leaders feared too violent a response in Chicago Lawn and Cicero. Eventually, a substantial march (met by catcalls, flying bottles and bricks) was conducted in Chicago Lawn, but only a splinter group marched in Cicero.

St. Mary of Czestochowa, a Neogothic church built in the so-called 'Polish Cathedral' style along with the sculpture of Christ the King by famed sculptor Professor Czesław Dźwigaj, who also cast the monumental bronze doors at St. Hyacinth's Basilica in Chicago. The church's other claim to fame is as the site of Al Capone's sister Mafalda's wedding in 1930.

[LilCerberus]

Capital of the Confederacy
Home of the late Aurther Ashe
The iBook Riot

[Jack]

Winona Ryder was supposedly born here, though actually I think she was born in the next county over.  Ummm...uhhh...there's a Famous Footwear store in town.

[Javakoala]

Locust Grove, Oklahoma:

Three Girl Scouts Murdered at Camp Garland just south of town.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oklahoma_Girl_Scout_Murders

This makes Gene Leroy Hart out to be a bad, bad man. The truth that no one wants to listen to is that he was living with the two pregnant women and when he wouldn't supply them with drugs and booze because they were pregnant and he wouldn't leave because he was paying most of the rent, they cried, "Rape".

His "daring escape" consisted of walking a half block away while he was mowing the county courthouse grounds and sitting in a cafe for over three hours before finally deciding to ask someone if they were headed to Locust Grove, a mere 25 miles away.

The items he stole from the sheriff's office during his escape were actually locked away where he could not find them and he did not go back inside to get this stuff. He just walked away, but these items were proof of his daring daylight escape.

Next door to the Scout property lived a family who had a son known for many attempted molestations of young children. But they kept everything hushed up and their son out of jail. When these murders happened, he was mentioned as a possible attacker of the girl scouts, but our noble sheriff, Pete Weaver, denied it and stated the family's son had not even been in the state the whole week the murders took place. Yet he was picked out of videos of the crowd trying to look at the crime scene.

The highly trained tracking dogs brought in to find Hart didn't fair too well. Supposedly, Hart was behind what happened to them. Truth is, one jumped out of the back of a pickup truck at highway speeds and another died of heatstroke.

God, I love small town BS.

[Newt]

The town I grew up in was known years ago as "The Turkey Capital of Canada".  Proud times.

[Rev. Powell]

The home of the Kentucky Derby.

Claims to have invented the cheeseburger (though slapping a piece of cheese on a hamburger doesn't seem like a great innovation to me)

Most famous citizen, by far: Muhammad Ali

Second most famous citizen: Tom Cruise

Other famous citizens: Ned Beatty, Hunter S. Thompson, Col. Sanders

Best director: Tod Browning or D.W. Griffith

Worst director: William Girdler

Best musician: Lionel Hampton

[meQal]

Can't say anything famous ever happen in Brookwood,AL. We are between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Alabama. Only thing to ever happen here that people might of heard of was a couple of mining accidents which sadly claimed the lives of some coal miners.

[RCMerchant]

I was born in NYC,which is famous for lotsa stuff,but lived most of my life in Lawton,MI. which is famous for absoulutly nada. It has the same name of Lawton ,Oklahoma. There have been 5 murders in Lawton in the past 10 years. I knew 5 of the victums,and 2 of the killers. For a while about 5 years ago,it seemed a meth lab was exploding every other day. Panthers (yes,panthers),have been spotted in the woods and fields. Moe Moyteka dressed up in a gorrilla mask and fur coat waaaaaay back in the 60's and terrorized some farmers. He was drunk.People still think it was Bigfoot. A dead mexican was found in a brine vat at the old pickle factory back in 1970.I found a dead cow out in a field when I was a kid,It was wintertime.I kicked it-a possum ran out his a$$!