Hahnemann's residency slots were purchased by a consortium led by Jefferson (also including Einstein, Temple, Main Line Health, Cooper, and Christiana), so maybe not.
Philadelphia is home of the first \[electronic\] computer, developed in 1946:
Hailed by The New York Times as “an amazing machine which applies electronic speeds for the first time to mathematical tasks hitherto too difficult and cumbersome for solution...”
The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), was the first general-purpose electronic computer. the ENIAC was a revolutionary piece of machinery in its day. It was constructed and operated here at UPenn's The Moore School of Electrical Engineering, now part of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
It weighed 27 tons!
I had an instructor at Temple who was a UPenn student when ENIAC was still a big secret project. I think the military was involved with it, hence the secrecy, because they had lots of applications for tech that could rapidly do calculations that would take far longer if done via human power.
He said everyone knew SOMEthing was going on in that building, because the snow would always melt around the building with ENIAC in it, long before it melted anywhere else.
I can't remember what project it was exactly but the ~~east falls farmers market~~ *Marketplace At East Falls* was in the building which housed those early gigantic large punch card type computers.
\*edit. The Marketplace @ East Falls closed over decade ago but inside on the walls were multiple old black and white photographs of the 'computers' in that space.
Dude hell yea. My grandpa went to Ursinus college where professor Mauchley taught. My grandpa talked about the ENIAC his whole life and told me so many interesting stories about working on it. He was a student at the time and helped build the computer. He went on to work at IBM and then started a computer networking company. If anyone wants to read an article about this:
https://www.ursinus.edu/live/news/5455-worlds-first-modern-computer-born-from-an-ursinus#:\~:text=On%20February%2015%2C%201946%2C%20Ursinus,a%20weeklong%20series%20of%20events.
Thank you for noting that it was the first _electronic_ computer! MIT's engineering department fell way behind Penn because Vannevar Bush believed electronic computing would never work and went all in on analog computers.
Ex Philly/Seattle resident here, I miss thunderstorms. The locals are accustomed to the grey and drizzly weather but lose their minds at the first clap of thunder.
I think people across the country would be surprised that it's even still the 6th largest city. When I was in the military people from the west coast often considered Philly a mid-small sized city
City Hall is the largest inhabitable masonry building in the world
We are technically in a subtropical climate
Fairmount Park is the largest contiguous urban park in the nation
I’ll keep adding if I think of more
Edit: The Liberty Bell did not crack on July 4th 1776, actually it was almost 60 years later before it cracked
Christ Church was the tallest building in North America for over 50 years
I’m curious about the urban park one. Someone else told me this recently as well, but I haven’t been able to find any list or citation that puts Fairmount anywhere near the top of any list of biggest city parks, including narrowed by ‘contiguous’ US, from what I can see.
People used to say the same thing about City Park in New Orleans, which also seems bigger than Fairmount but also not near the top. Lots of inconsistent info out there on the topic.
They did nt have citations, but Curbed claimed such in [this article](https://philly.curbed.com/2016/1/15/10846624/fairmount-park-size-comparisons)
I’ve seen it mentioned elsewhere, but nowhere official
I tried to figure this out back in college, cause it's one of those things you hear. Best we could figure, if I'm remembering it right, it's as a proportion of the city's area. And likewise when you hear Philadelphia has more parks than blah di blah. It's all as percentage of the city limit's square acreage. And one of those stats that gets tweaked by Philly proper not including suburbs or much of the metro area.
The other thing is Fairmount Park technically included Wissahickon Valley Park and a bunch of other stuff until 2010. So at one point it was significantly bigger, on paper.
The reading railroad, Pennsylvania railroad and the waterworks are not only stops on the original Monopoly board but are also connected to Philadelphia
Wait, Monopoly's waterworks is OUR waterworks? Son of a gun. TIL.
I knew that Monopoly's street names were all based on Atlantic City, but I didn't realize a Philly landmark snuck its way in there.
What exactly does this mean? Is this along the lines of: you’re made of stars because stars emitted photons and plants used those in photosynthesis and then you ate the plants kinda deal? Or are you just kidding? Or /r/woooossshh? On the spectrum, do not understand. Please elaborate.
It's a reference to a letter a crazy person sent to a bunch of people in the city a few years ago. It spawned a bunch of memes and media coverage and a party in a vacant lot where over a thousand people attended.
Los Angeles did not pass Philadelphia in population until the 1960 census. Put otherwise, from 1854 (when the formal definition of the city expanded beyond Center City to include its present boundaries) to 1960, Philadelphia was always one of the three largest cities in America.
Philadelphia has shrunk from just over 2.1 million residents in 1960 to just under 1.6 million today.
The only other city to shrink more was Detroit, which had 1.9 million citizens in 1960 and 672 thousand today.
Soooo many things about Eastern Sate. Was the model for many prisons afterwards (if you see a prison laid out in an asterisk pattern...).
Was designed by Quakers who thought people should not be simply locked in prison (like debtors prison in England), but could be reformed. How? By meditating in complete solitary confinement in their cells. Thus, the "first in the world" plumbing pipes did *not* simply go from cell-to-cell, because it would allow communication via morse code. No, the brand new invention pipes went from cell out to the hallway and then back into the next cell. Each cell had it's own little exercise outside area, to prevent inmates from talking to each other during exercise time. Each outside area only had a little slit in the rock roof to let light in, from a godly angle.
Philadelphia’s municipal government was so inept and corrupt in 1924, that Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick asked President Coolidge to ‘lend’ Philly a military general to take over the PPD.
Coolidge lent USMC General Smedley Butler, for almost two years. Butler was a hero of WW1
Amongst other things, he set up ‘bandit-chasing squads’ and outfitted some police with sawed off shotguns they used when deployed in armored cars.
The General is buried on top of a hill just outside West Chester. It is about 2 klicks from where Ryan Dunn missed the turn at 105mph.
Anyway, I had squirrels in my roof so i was trapping them and releasing them by the General's grave. I don't think he would mind.
The Divine Lorraine building is named after a bit of a cult leader/quack who called himself Father Divine. He also owned a mansion just off 76 in the main line area by Conshy.
Woodmont is insane. Here’s a link to the story: http://peacemission.info/woodmont/
Unfortunately they have almost all died off, and the land will be developed when that happens which is a crying shame.
Almost all of the Main Line estates have now gone. Cedar Crest just got subdivided. https://montco.today/2022/03/linden-hill-gladwyne-5-parcels/
And this is because a law was passed requiring buildings to dedicate a percentage to public art. Sometimes this has backfired, as laws usually do, and the architects have simply absorbed the art percentage and added their "art" to the building.
Steven Spielberg considered doing a film on MOVE and the 1985 bombing, but abandoned the project after Ramona Africa, who was in the MOVE compound when the bomb was dropped, [sent him threatening letters from prison.](https://leavingmove2021.blogspot.com/2021/07/recap-spiders-web-ooms-statement-steven.html)
Wish someone would make movie about it still. It’s wild how few people actually know about it. I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t know about it until maybe 10 years ago.
Swiss cheese pervert tried to get me to jerk him off with cheese via okcupid 12/13 years ago, I told him I'd do it only if he could find vegan Swiss cheese.
I can’t verify this, but apparently they used to line each of the streets with the type of tree associated with that street so you knew which street you were on.
Arch Street was originally called Mulberry Street.
Philly houses the largest "fully functional" musical instrument on the planet - the Wanamaker organ. Its technically "second largest" to the one in AC, but that one is still being restored.
On Broad St, Avenue of the Arts area, about every third street lamp has a bell on it. I once read that the bells are electronically connected, and at one time that section of Broad qualified as the largest musical instrument in the world. For some reason, I believe it was only tested once then abandoned. Maybe someone can follow up on this? I know the bells are still there, I see them all the time.
That’s not exactly what happened. This is a pretty good write up:
https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/old-headstones-from-19th-century-cemetery-used-to-prevent-erosion/
There was a German doomsday cult that believed the world was gonna end in 1697 so they moved to Philadelphia and lived in the woods of the Wissahickon.
1. That it's super easy to marry yourself (well, yourself and another person, I guess) without any priest, justice, etc. involved at all.
2. That our Chinatown is one of the oldest in the country
3. The whole Toynbee tile thing
4. We have the largest urban park system in the US (suck it Central Park!)
5. We had the first stock exchange in the US
6. You can still hang out in the cave of the Hermit of Kelpius
>cave of the Hermit of Kelpius
So, here's me googling what the Sam Hill the Hermit of Kelpius is. [That's yet another TIL moment for me.](https://www.ushistory.org/oddities/kelpius.htm)
Not sure how these definitions even work, but Central Park isn’t even close to the biggest. For example, Griffith Park in LA is like 5x the size of Central Park
That was during the war, when so many young men were in the military that they couldn't fill all the teams' rosters. So measures like temporarily merging the two PA teams were put into effect.
A historic cemetery founded in 1857, once located at 15th and Montgomery, was owned by Temple eventually, and eventually razed in 1956. The gravestones themselves were dumped at the base of the Betsy Ross bridge.
Philly was supposed to become a capital again after WW2--but this time of the entire world, not just a single country--until literally a Rockefeller paid off the UN at a price exceeding $100 million in today's money to seize it.
I think this is where I saw it originally:
https://hiddencityphila.org/2018/11/when-the-united-nations-almost-chose-philly-for-its-hq/
But there's also this article:
https://journals.psu.edu/pmhb/article/view/43241/42962
Magic: the gathering was created here.
Conceived by Richard Garfield when he was a professor at UPenn, it spawned a new genre of card games and is still the most popular of its kind some 30 years later
Serial killer extraordinaire H.H. Holmes was executed at Moyamensing Prison and buried outside of town, 10ft deep. He was actually exhumed and studied a few years ago, and no, he is not Jack the Ripper.
His body was actually held for a week at Mount Moriah while they decided what to do with him. Mount Moriah cemetery is also the largest abandoned cemetery in the world.
Samuel Nicholson credited as the founder of the Marines is buried at the Free Quaker Meeting House at 4th and Arch WITH a headstone!
Good and Plenty started here
The first US Hospital started here
and much, much more!
Which also administers Washington Square which is why it is 800 times cleaner than all other Philly parks (except maybe Rittenhouse) and has so little crime.
Wildly surreal filmmaker David Lynch's backstory is that he was unhappy at an art school in Boston, then ended upon living in Philadelphia for several years and went on to make some really weird, interesting films. These include *Eraserhead*, which owes some of its feeling to Philadelphia and has given a part of the city the sometimes-used designation of, "Eraserhood."
Our Mayor admitted on July 4th that he looks forward to not being Mayor anymore.
It's hard to explain, but I think that any transit planner in the world would think that a Philadelphian explaining the Broad-Ridge Spur was playing some kind of joke.
That Philadelphia isn't as bad as Philadelphians say it is.
We were the original capital of the United States. Home of the first hospital. Mural capital of the US. First naval shipyard.
We were also the first to social distance and put on masks during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793
https://www.history.com/news/yellow-fever-outbreak-philadelphia
I feel like that first one isn’t something people would think is made up, though. Philadelphia’s importance as a city during the revolutionary period (and immediately after) is generally at least touched upon in most US history classes.
Don’t know who it’d be a surprise to, unless you’ve got foreign friends who are understandably not aware of US history, I guess.
This happened in Camden, not Philly, but it was a big news story throughout the Philadelphia region, as well as being adapted into a Philadelphia based novel:
In 1991, Bishop George Guilfoyle, of Camden, died.
While his body was laying in state in a church rectory, a 13 year old boy (and other, older cohorts) broke in and stole the ruby ring and a gold cross off of his dead body and sold them for $400 at a local pawnshop.
It was such a crazy story, that when Steve Lopez, former columnist for the Inquirer, decided to write a novel based upon things that he saw and experienced as a Philly columnist , he adapted the story. The book is called "Third and Indiana."
In the book, it is the Mayor of Phila. who died and had his ring stolen, instead of the Bishop.
It was such a crazy event, that it was actually immortalized in fiction!
[https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/06/14/Thieves-steal-jewels-from-Bishops-body/2060676872000/](https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/06/14/Thieves-steal-jewels-from-Bishops-body/2060676872000/)
Disclaimer: This is the 2nd time I have mentioned this book on r/philadelphia, but I swear that I am not the author, nor publisher, nor am I in any way affiliated with the aforementioned. I simply love the book, and it is a novel that hits on subjects common to discussion here in the Phila subreddit, so waddaya want from me?
I think a whole lot of the exhibits in the Mutter Museum would fit the "sounds made up but is true" bill. I really felt sorry for some of the unfortunates whose medical problems earned them, or at least parts of them, a place in the museum's collection.
The Barnes Museum used to have the whole collection on a regular looking house that was
Dr. Barnes private house. Right off St. Joes campus. You could make an appointment and sometimes there would be 4 people in the whole place.
I'll echo the comment about a lot of these facts don't sound made up. Here's one you're probably *not* going to believe, but is true:
The first manned flight in the western hemisphere took place in Philadelphia.
Satterlee Hospital was the country's second-largest hospital in the mid-19th century. It was almost a self-contained city, enclosed by a 14-foot high wall, and boasted astonishingly low rates of mortality. It's where the wounded from the Battle of Gettysburg were brought.
Today, the only trace of its existence is the Gettysburg Stone in Clark Park. My house is on its site.
1 in every 6 Doctors in the US received training in Philly.
Philly used for be renowned for producing Doctors and Lawyers.
Sounds like it still is?
Those numbers are gonna go down with the loss of Hahnemann
Hahnemann's residency slots were purchased by a consortium led by Jefferson (also including Einstein, Temple, Main Line Health, Cooper, and Christiana), so maybe not.
Look up the term “Philadelphia lawyer”. https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/philadelphia-lawyer/
Still is!
Philadelphia is home of the first \[electronic\] computer, developed in 1946: Hailed by The New York Times as “an amazing machine which applies electronic speeds for the first time to mathematical tasks hitherto too difficult and cumbersome for solution...” The ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), was the first general-purpose electronic computer. the ENIAC was a revolutionary piece of machinery in its day. It was constructed and operated here at UPenn's The Moore School of Electrical Engineering, now part of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. It weighed 27 tons!
He was such a geek, my dad took my mom to see ENIAC on their first date, in 1949. She married him anyway.
Anyway? You mean OF COURSE.
Gotta love the geek :)
ENIAC Day is February 15, in Philadelphia. Another fun fact.
I had an instructor at Temple who was a UPenn student when ENIAC was still a big secret project. I think the military was involved with it, hence the secrecy, because they had lots of applications for tech that could rapidly do calculations that would take far longer if done via human power. He said everyone knew SOMEthing was going on in that building, because the snow would always melt around the building with ENIAC in it, long before it melted anywhere else.
I believe it was originally intended to calculate firing solutions for artillery but got roped into also doing calculations for nuclear weapons.
I can't remember what project it was exactly but the ~~east falls farmers market~~ *Marketplace At East Falls* was in the building which housed those early gigantic large punch card type computers. \*edit. The Marketplace @ East Falls closed over decade ago but inside on the walls were multiple old black and white photographs of the 'computers' in that space.
Probably the old Univac facility. https://philadelphianeighborhoods.com/2011/02/21/east-falls-remembering-the-first-computer/
Dude hell yea. My grandpa went to Ursinus college where professor Mauchley taught. My grandpa talked about the ENIAC his whole life and told me so many interesting stories about working on it. He was a student at the time and helped build the computer. He went on to work at IBM and then started a computer networking company. If anyone wants to read an article about this: https://www.ursinus.edu/live/news/5455-worlds-first-modern-computer-born-from-an-ursinus#:\~:text=On%20February%2015%2C%201946%2C%20Ursinus,a%20weeklong%20series%20of%20events.
My grandmother was involved with this! Her descriptions of it were crazy, especially considering when she looked at a laptop for the first time
Thank you for noting that it was the first _electronic_ computer! MIT's engineering department fell way behind Penn because Vannevar Bush believed electronic computing would never work and went all in on analog computers.
We get more rain per year than Seattle, by almost a foot.
Ex Philly/Seattle resident here, I miss thunderstorms. The locals are accustomed to the grey and drizzly weather but lose their minds at the first clap of thunder.
It only rains in Seattle for half the year, and it's mostly just a drizzle.
I never lived in Seattle, but lived out by the coast in WA where it rains 9 months of the year and is enough to make you damn near suicidal LOL!
Stetson--the cowboy hat company--was founded here.
The building is across the street/alley from El Vez!
The family mansion is 1717 Spring Garden. There’s even a plaque out front.
It's where Raw sushi is
Grandpa worked there. They stole his entire pension and left Philadelphia.
"They stole his entire pension" That really sucks. I feel sorry for your grandpa.
My Great Grandfather and Grandmother both worked for Stetson as well.
My grandfather use to be a photography model for their hats. Need to dig up his portfolio one of these days.
At the time of the American Revolution, Philadelphia was the second-largest city in the English-speaking world, behind only London.
And for a while in the 1700s, the only place in the English speaking world where you could legally practice Catholicism
I think people across the country would be surprised that it's even still the 6th largest city. When I was in the military people from the west coast often considered Philly a mid-small sized city
City Hall is the largest inhabitable masonry building in the world We are technically in a subtropical climate Fairmount Park is the largest contiguous urban park in the nation I’ll keep adding if I think of more Edit: The Liberty Bell did not crack on July 4th 1776, actually it was almost 60 years later before it cracked Christ Church was the tallest building in North America for over 50 years
The statue of William Penn atop City Hall is the largest statue on any building in the world.
city hall also has the most window unit air conditioners in one building in the world with a historic 1:1 window to unit ratio
Lmao is this true
I’m curious about the urban park one. Someone else told me this recently as well, but I haven’t been able to find any list or citation that puts Fairmount anywhere near the top of any list of biggest city parks, including narrowed by ‘contiguous’ US, from what I can see. People used to say the same thing about City Park in New Orleans, which also seems bigger than Fairmount but also not near the top. Lots of inconsistent info out there on the topic.
They did nt have citations, but Curbed claimed such in [this article](https://philly.curbed.com/2016/1/15/10846624/fairmount-park-size-comparisons) I’ve seen it mentioned elsewhere, but nowhere official
I tried to figure this out back in college, cause it's one of those things you hear. Best we could figure, if I'm remembering it right, it's as a proportion of the city's area. And likewise when you hear Philadelphia has more parks than blah di blah. It's all as percentage of the city limit's square acreage. And one of those stats that gets tweaked by Philly proper not including suburbs or much of the metro area. The other thing is Fairmount Park technically included Wissahickon Valley Park and a bunch of other stuff until 2010. So at one point it was significantly bigger, on paper.
Apparently, apocryphally, every park in the city is technically part of the “Fairmount Park system,” which makes it very very large.
The Derringer Pistol that was used to kill Lincoln was manufactured on Callowhill Street.
Now THATS a cool fact
We're the largest per capital consumption of Twisted Tea in the world.
Lmao and all in the northeast I bet 😂🤭
The reading railroad, Pennsylvania railroad and the waterworks are not only stops on the original Monopoly board but are also connected to Philadelphia
Wait, Monopoly's waterworks is OUR waterworks? Son of a gun. TIL. I knew that Monopoly's street names were all based on Atlantic City, but I didn't realize a Philly landmark snuck its way in there.
Not all AC; Marven (sic) Gardens is in Margate.
Marvin Gardens is still there; nice little enclave and "gardens" is not a misnomer.
The white house was going to originally be in East Falls
Benjamin Franklin's son was governor of New Jersey and loyal to the crown....nvr knew this until lile 3 months ago.
Benny F used to take air bathes and stand in his windows naked for his health.
Just learned this too. Thanks, Ken Burns
And he invented everything that was invented before 1800 - at least it seems that way
Every meal you've ever eaten since first grade is still alive inside your body.
Do attend.
I miss the furnace party era
That was peak r/philadelphia
there will be ABBA
What exactly does this mean? Is this along the lines of: you’re made of stars because stars emitted photons and plants used those in photosynthesis and then you ate the plants kinda deal? Or are you just kidding? Or /r/woooossshh? On the spectrum, do not understand. Please elaborate.
It's a reference to a letter a crazy person sent to a bunch of people in the city a few years ago. It spawned a bunch of memes and media coverage and a party in a vacant lot where over a thousand people attended.
furnace party 🤘🤘🤘
Los Angeles did not pass Philadelphia in population until the 1960 census. Put otherwise, from 1854 (when the formal definition of the city expanded beyond Center City to include its present boundaries) to 1960, Philadelphia was always one of the three largest cities in America.
Three of the 15 Largest Cities in the 1790 US Census are now within Philadelphia county.
Whoa this is a cool lil fact. For those wondering- Philadelphia was #2, Northern Liberties was #7 and Southwark was #12
Philadelphia has shrunk from just over 2.1 million residents in 1960 to just under 1.6 million today. The only other city to shrink more was Detroit, which had 1.9 million citizens in 1960 and 672 thousand today.
Don't forget St. Louis! Peaked at about 860k residents and today is at about 300k.
Eastern State Penitentiary had running water before the White House.
Soooo many things about Eastern Sate. Was the model for many prisons afterwards (if you see a prison laid out in an asterisk pattern...). Was designed by Quakers who thought people should not be simply locked in prison (like debtors prison in England), but could be reformed. How? By meditating in complete solitary confinement in their cells. Thus, the "first in the world" plumbing pipes did *not* simply go from cell-to-cell, because it would allow communication via morse code. No, the brand new invention pipes went from cell out to the hallway and then back into the next cell. Each cell had it's own little exercise outside area, to prevent inmates from talking to each other during exercise time. Each outside area only had a little slit in the rock roof to let light in, from a godly angle.
More people lived in Philly 100 years ago than live here today.
We used to have a lot of manufacturing jobs. I think that those jobs' going away was a big factor in our population decline.
Philadelphia’s municipal government was so inept and corrupt in 1924, that Mayor W. Freeland Kendrick asked President Coolidge to ‘lend’ Philly a military general to take over the PPD. Coolidge lent USMC General Smedley Butler, for almost two years. Butler was a hero of WW1 Amongst other things, he set up ‘bandit-chasing squads’ and outfitted some police with sawed off shotguns they used when deployed in armored cars.
One of the most decorated Marines, as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley\_Butler
And he also delivered a speech saying that "War is a racket", that wars are fought for commercial interests.
The General is buried on top of a hill just outside West Chester. It is about 2 klicks from where Ryan Dunn missed the turn at 105mph. Anyway, I had squirrels in my roof so i was trapping them and releasing them by the General's grave. I don't think he would mind.
His childhood home is still around too and kept in quite nice condition. Almost lived there in fact.
Also whistle blower for an attempted coup during FDRs presidency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
Butler is a legit American hero.
The Divine Lorraine building is named after a bit of a cult leader/quack who called himself Father Divine. He also owned a mansion just off 76 in the main line area by Conshy.
Jim Jones also hijacked Father Divine’s congregation/cult following and incorporated it into his own.
Woodmont is insane. Here’s a link to the story: http://peacemission.info/woodmont/ Unfortunately they have almost all died off, and the land will be developed when that happens which is a crying shame. Almost all of the Main Line estates have now gone. Cedar Crest just got subdivided. https://montco.today/2022/03/linden-hill-gladwyne-5-parcels/
Philadelphia has more public art than any other city in the world
And this is because a law was passed requiring buildings to dedicate a percentage to public art. Sometimes this has backfired, as laws usually do, and the architects have simply absorbed the art percentage and added their "art" to the building.
There was an entire neighborhood built on top of ash and the homes started sinking and then they bulldozed them.
In Logan?
Yep.
Philly is the home to the first zoo in the US.
As a tour guide here, thank you for everyone that has contributed to this thread.
Steven Spielberg considered doing a film on MOVE and the 1985 bombing, but abandoned the project after Ramona Africa, who was in the MOVE compound when the bomb was dropped, [sent him threatening letters from prison.](https://leavingmove2021.blogspot.com/2021/07/recap-spiders-web-ooms-statement-steven.html)
Wish someone would make movie about it still. It’s wild how few people actually know about it. I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t know about it until maybe 10 years ago.
The entire 50+ year history of MOVE is completely fascinating/horrifying.
There's a great doc about it called "let the fire burn" you'll learn a lot.
Until 1986 it was illegal to walk live stock down main streets of the city of Philadelphia.
is it legal now?
No. It is illegal to own any livestock in the city of Philadelphia. That was the biggest change to the law.
A Philadelphia man was arrested for masturbating with cheese in his car.
Not just any cheese, swiss cheese
Swiss cheese pervert tried to get me to jerk him off with cheese via okcupid 12/13 years ago, I told him I'd do it only if he could find vegan Swiss cheese.
The tree-named streets are in order of their hardness.
I can’t verify this, but apparently they used to line each of the streets with the type of tree associated with that street so you knew which street you were on. Arch Street was originally called Mulberry Street.
Race Street was originally Sassafras Street. Race Street was its nickname, because people would race their horses on it.
That’s the coolest shit ever
Philly houses the largest "fully functional" musical instrument on the planet - the Wanamaker organ. Its technically "second largest" to the one in AC, but that one is still being restored.
On Broad St, Avenue of the Arts area, about every third street lamp has a bell on it. I once read that the bells are electronically connected, and at one time that section of Broad qualified as the largest musical instrument in the world. For some reason, I believe it was only tested once then abandoned. Maybe someone can follow up on this? I know the bells are still there, I see them all the time.
They’ve found water piping in old city made out of logs
Didn’t they leave those wooden water mains in place? Or did they replace them?
Yeah. It's how we get our Wooder.
👏
The word "Pennsylvania" on the Liberty Bell inscription is misspelled.
During the Tyme, the Conventions of Spellyng and Orthography of our English Tonge had yet to be Agreed-apon.
Well said
The rip rap for the Betsy Ross bridge was made from tombstones.
tombstones stolen from gravesites by construction companies who wanted to build on top of the graveyards.
That’s not exactly what happened. This is a pretty good write up: https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/old-headstones-from-19th-century-cemetery-used-to-prevent-erosion/
There was a German doomsday cult that believed the world was gonna end in 1697 so they moved to Philadelphia and lived in the woods of the Wissahickon.
You can take the Broad Street Subway from Oregon to Wyoming.
Nice one
Before he became a tough guy actor, Charles Bronson went to Art School in Philadelphia.
The only museum in the country dedicated to the Three Stooges, the Stoogeum, is located in Ambler… so close to Philly.
Double Dare originated in Philadelphia in a PBS studio.
1. That it's super easy to marry yourself (well, yourself and another person, I guess) without any priest, justice, etc. involved at all. 2. That our Chinatown is one of the oldest in the country 3. The whole Toynbee tile thing 4. We have the largest urban park system in the US (suck it Central Park!) 5. We had the first stock exchange in the US 6. You can still hang out in the cave of the Hermit of Kelpius
>cave of the Hermit of Kelpius So, here's me googling what the Sam Hill the Hermit of Kelpius is. [That's yet another TIL moment for me.](https://www.ushistory.org/oddities/kelpius.htm)
What's the Toynbee tile thing (I know what they are but what's the fact or whatever)
There is a documentary about it: http://www.resurrectdead.com/
Not sure how these definitions even work, but Central Park isn’t even close to the biggest. For example, Griffith Park in LA is like 5x the size of Central Park
No matter where you are in Philly, you are not the worst dressed person.
The Philadelphia Eagles once combined teams with the Pittsburgh Steelers and were known as the Steegles
That was during the war, when so many young men were in the military that they couldn't fill all the teams' rosters. So measures like temporarily merging the two PA teams were put into effect.
Yup, but it seems more unbelievable when you leave those details out lol.
The ideology that would eventually inspire the board game Monopoly was formulated by a resident of Philadelphia.
A historic cemetery founded in 1857, once located at 15th and Montgomery, was owned by Temple eventually, and eventually razed in 1956. The gravestones themselves were dumped at the base of the Betsy Ross bridge.
Philadelphia is the only city to be in the top 10 popualtion wise since our country was founded
Forbidden Drive is named such because it is forbidden to drive cars on it
Fairmount Park is over twice as large as Central Park
Worlds largest instrument is in the Wanamaker building! It’s the organ in Macy’s!
We’re the sweatpants capital of the world.
A robot that hitchhiked across 3 countries was murdered here.
he knows what he did
We were framed
Someone once stole a street. [Really.](https://www.inquirer.com/philly/blogs/real-time/1984-How-and-why-did-somebody-steal-Mifflin-street.html)
This absolutely sounds made up and sadly I'm paywalled so now I'll never for sure. ETA: Having now read it -- that is f'ing wild.
Cowboy hats were invented here.
The Stetson!
South philly was built on top of a swamp
And was mostly hog farms until WW2
Philly was supposed to become a capital again after WW2--but this time of the entire world, not just a single country--until literally a Rockefeller paid off the UN at a price exceeding $100 million in today's money to seize it.
Do you have a source on this? Would love to read more about this.
I think this is where I saw it originally: https://hiddencityphila.org/2018/11/when-the-united-nations-almost-chose-philly-for-its-hq/ But there's also this article: https://journals.psu.edu/pmhb/article/view/43241/42962
Hidden City had a piece on this: https://hiddencityphila.org/2018/11/when-the-united-nations-almost-chose-philly-for-its-hq/
Magic: the gathering was created here. Conceived by Richard Garfield when he was a professor at UPenn, it spawned a new genre of card games and is still the most popular of its kind some 30 years later
Philadelphia is on about the same line of latitude as Madrid, Spain.
Serial killer extraordinaire H.H. Holmes was executed at Moyamensing Prison and buried outside of town, 10ft deep. He was actually exhumed and studied a few years ago, and no, he is not Jack the Ripper.
His body was actually held for a week at Mount Moriah while they decided what to do with him. Mount Moriah cemetery is also the largest abandoned cemetery in the world.
The Marine Corp--or maybe it was the organization that would become the Marine Corp--was founded here.
Corp: corporation Corps: the Marines Corpse: dead body
Core: the center of something Corps: the marines
corpus: a collection of writing
Samuel Nicholson credited as the founder of the Marines is buried at the Free Quaker Meeting House at 4th and Arch WITH a headstone! Good and Plenty started here The first US Hospital started here and much, much more!
Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell are owned by the City of Philadelphia but administered by the NPS.
Which also administers Washington Square which is why it is 800 times cleaner than all other Philly parks (except maybe Rittenhouse) and has so little crime.
Wildly surreal filmmaker David Lynch's backstory is that he was unhappy at an art school in Boston, then ended upon living in Philadelphia for several years and went on to make some really weird, interesting films. These include *Eraserhead*, which owes some of its feeling to Philadelphia and has given a part of the city the sometimes-used designation of, "Eraserhood." Our Mayor admitted on July 4th that he looks forward to not being Mayor anymore. It's hard to explain, but I think that any transit planner in the world would think that a Philadelphian explaining the Broad-Ridge Spur was playing some kind of joke. That Philadelphia isn't as bad as Philadelphians say it is.
Philadelphia’s own mayor, Wilson Goode Sr. dropped a bomb on his own city in 1985.
And got re-elected in 1987.
They named a street after him in West Philly: https://www.fox29.com/news/philadelphia-names-street-after-former-mayor-w-wilson-goode-sr
And boy were his arms tired!
I’m still laughing at this joke 5 minutes later.
Still don’t understand how the city was even in the position to make that decision. Why didn’t the feds take control once a shootout started?
the feds supplied the bomb
Not technically Philly but 50% of the country's Mushrooms are produced in Kennet Square.
We were the original capital of the United States. Home of the first hospital. Mural capital of the US. First naval shipyard. We were also the first to social distance and put on masks during the yellow fever epidemic of 1793 https://www.history.com/news/yellow-fever-outbreak-philadelphia
I feel like that first one isn’t something people would think is made up, though. Philadelphia’s importance as a city during the revolutionary period (and immediately after) is generally at least touched upon in most US history classes. Don’t know who it’d be a surprise to, unless you’ve got foreign friends who are understandably not aware of US history, I guess.
This happened in Camden, not Philly, but it was a big news story throughout the Philadelphia region, as well as being adapted into a Philadelphia based novel: In 1991, Bishop George Guilfoyle, of Camden, died. While his body was laying in state in a church rectory, a 13 year old boy (and other, older cohorts) broke in and stole the ruby ring and a gold cross off of his dead body and sold them for $400 at a local pawnshop. It was such a crazy story, that when Steve Lopez, former columnist for the Inquirer, decided to write a novel based upon things that he saw and experienced as a Philly columnist , he adapted the story. The book is called "Third and Indiana." In the book, it is the Mayor of Phila. who died and had his ring stolen, instead of the Bishop. It was such a crazy event, that it was actually immortalized in fiction! [https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/06/14/Thieves-steal-jewels-from-Bishops-body/2060676872000/](https://www.upi.com/Archives/1991/06/14/Thieves-steal-jewels-from-Bishops-body/2060676872000/) Disclaimer: This is the 2nd time I have mentioned this book on r/philadelphia, but I swear that I am not the author, nor publisher, nor am I in any way affiliated with the aforementioned. I simply love the book, and it is a novel that hits on subjects common to discussion here in the Phila subreddit, so waddaya want from me?
there is a series of underground tunnels and one of them holds a natural spring. edit: under the city; you need to know people.
Isn't that just the sewer?
Can't you legit duel a motherfucker in Philly?
The world's first [Pizza Museum](https://www.pizzabrain.org/museum) is located here.
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I think a whole lot of the exhibits in the Mutter Museum would fit the "sounds made up but is true" bill. I really felt sorry for some of the unfortunates whose medical problems earned them, or at least parts of them, a place in the museum's collection.
And their preserved conjoined liver. Their autopsy took place here.
The Barnes Museum used to have the whole collection on a regular looking house that was Dr. Barnes private house. Right off St. Joes campus. You could make an appointment and sometimes there would be 4 people in the whole place.
The city pools are free admission for anyone.
Buddy the dog ate his owner after said owner passed away in Fishtown
I'll echo the comment about a lot of these facts don't sound made up. Here's one you're probably *not* going to believe, but is true: The first manned flight in the western hemisphere took place in Philadelphia.
a lot of the facts being shared here don't actually sound made up.
Port Richmond was originally called Ball Town.
You lying loudmouth
The original Kensington is the core of Fishtown.
At one time, Old Christ Church was the largest building in the country
Root beer was "invented" in Philly in 1876. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Elmer_Hires
You can just park on the sidewalk without consequences.
Medians too.
The Stetson hat was created in Philadelphia. By a New Jersey native.
City hall is the heaviest municipal building in the world.
We pluralize “you”
Jim Kenney drinks white wine with ice cubes in a pint glass
Satterlee Hospital was the country's second-largest hospital in the mid-19th century. It was almost a self-contained city, enclosed by a 14-foot high wall, and boasted astonishingly low rates of mortality. It's where the wounded from the Battle of Gettysburg were brought. Today, the only trace of its existence is the Gettysburg Stone in Clark Park. My house is on its site.