[Music] you might think you know these world famous cities but they each have their strange little secrets and we've compiled some of the best from all around the world from the Spy capital of World War II to the animal that serves as Norway's colonel-in-chief I'm Mike with list25 and join me as I count down 25 of the strangest facts about well-known cities 25 Christ the Redeemer is struck by lightning four times a year if you need a sign that the apocalypse is upon us well here's one Christ the redemer that 98t statue that sits 2340
ft above Rio de Janeiro attracts millions of tourists but at such a high elevation it attracts something else too lightning lightning zaps the soap stone tiles of the structure on average three or four times a year and it's not always just for show in 2014 one lightning strike was so strong that it damaged Christ's head into two of his fingers workers hurried to redeem the statue by completing restoration work in just a few months and the Savior looks just as good as new 24 Museum filled with venomous spiders you don't expect to see live animals
at a museum and certainly not this kind ever since the 1960s The Finnish Museum of Natural History has been a breeding ground for the Iran morome a highly venomous spider native to South America how did they get all the way to Finland one theory is that it came in boxes of wood ship shipped across the Atlantic the infestation at the Museum fills most of the ground floor luckily there's very little chance of a visitor being bitten as these spiders usually scatter into the darkness as soon as they're Disturbed 23 Paris doesn't have stop signs what
comes to mind when you think of a big city big buildings roads cars and a ton of traffic signals right well in Paris if you're waiting for a sign to tell you to stop you might just get yourself into an accident Believe It or Not across the entire city there are zero stop signs but before you go speeding through the streets that doesn't mean there are no rules a car coming to an intersection always has to give right away to cars on the right theoretically if everyone follows that rule you don't need stop signs but
personally I feel a little safer knowing other drivers have a huge signal telling them what to do 22 UT has party hats on CCTV cameras it's almost impossible to avoid surveillance in the 21st century most of all we tend to think about our online activity but if you look up during daily walks around town you might be surprised to see how many CCTV cameras are pointed down at pedestrians that's the message two artists from Holland were trying to communicate by decorating cameras around the city of utr with birthday party hats the installation was part of
a commemoration for Author George Orwell's 110th birthday back in 2013 whose famous novel 1984 imagined a hyper surveil dystopian future where no one could Escape monitoring 21 Greece an entire underground ancient city Athens gets all the attention for ancient Greece but if you went back in time there were other places to go the second biggest of those was a place called taniki 180 Mi north of the capital Athens it was an important place of trade and later became the capital of Macedonia but secrets from this ancient city rich in history are still being uncovered to
this day during the recent construction of a Metro System researchers excavated the ancient ruins of a 4th Century Town buildings houses and exceptionally well reserved mosaic tiles were all interconnected by narrow paths and built in a grid design 20 hurg walls used hydrophobic paint anyone who's lived in a city has probably seen a drunk person peing in a corner at least once when officials in Amber got fed up with tourists coming to the city drinking too much and going to the toilet in public they introduced a new system hydrophobic walls this hydrophobic oleophobic coating has
one purpose to repel water that means the next time someone tries to use these walls as urinal they'll end up with most of it bouncing back and landing on themselves that's a pretty effective way to streamline Justice 19 trulo was built to evade taxes ever since taxes have existed there have been inventive ways of avoiding them one unlikely way back in 17th century Italy was to build uniquely shaped homes in the village of Alberto Bello residents were Keen to avoid paying the pragmatica de barabus law instituted by the kingdom of of Naples this law applied
to any Urban settlements in a technicality the people of Alberto Bello claimed that if they were able to dismantle their settlements they shouldn't have to pay so they built without mortar instead using Limestone and shaped their houses in a kind of pyramid resembling beehives the structures are now a UNESCO world heritage listed site attracting tourists from all around the world and it's all thanks to taxes 18 Hong Kong has a half mile long escalator what's the longest you've ever spent on an escalator usually they last half a minute a minute tops but in Hong Kong
there's a $30 million escalator system that runs half a mile composed of 16 escalators and travelators it's to make traveling the hilly terrain a little easier and going from one side to the other takes around 20 minutes it's actually a great way to see some of the best parts of the city watch out though it can get pretty busy handling 78,000 people on average each day 17 melbin used to be named batmania hundreds of years before the Dark Knight trilogy the city now known as melbin in Australia was called batmania and while I'd love to
tell you it was named after some Anonymous masked vigilante the real reason was for a man named John Batman this Batman wasn't a billionaire playboy he was a businessman looking for land to graze his cows according to Batman he met with Elders of the area and traded clothes weapons and supplies for 600,000 acres of land considering that he didn't speak the same language though the treaty has been controversial after the governor of New South Wales voided the treaty the first plans for the city were drawn up and it was given the name batmania unfortunately for
Bruce Wayne fans the name only lasted a couple of years before it was changed 16 Lisbon and esel were full of spies in World War II Portugal may have been a neutral party during World War II but its capital Lisbon as well as the coastal town of esil played as the background to spies from all sides jocking for intelligence undercovered German agents attempted to hijack cargo for their naval war in the Atlantic while agents and double agent scraped any information they could among those was a British soldier stationed there by the name of Ian Fleming
who went on to write the James Bond series giving the world the most famous spy of all time although I'm not sure you really want to be a famous spy 15 Warsaw has the narrowest house in the world next time you complain about rent and house prices spare thought for the poor soul who lives in the carrot house in warsa Poland the entire building measures just 5 ft across at its widest point 30 ft tall and much of the space is taken up by the stairs needed to navigate the space the Gat house is the
product of Polish architect yakob Str and has made it into the Guinness World Record as the narrowest house in the world astonishingly there is just enough space for a bathroom bed and a tiny stove top just hope that there aren't any bad smells going around because otherwise there's no Escape 14 the Happy Meal originated in Kansas city has there been a more powerful marketing tool for children than the Happy Meal I can still remember trying to collect toys from whatever promotion McDonald's had going on at the time over the years there have been toys from
Jurassic Park Jungle Book Space Jam and just about any Blockbuster but when did the idea start it's usually traced back to an advertising specialist named Bob Bernstein who had already developed the happy cup for McDonald's in 1969 after watching a competitor of theirs release a fun meal Bernstein created the Happy Meal a burger with a smaller size of fries a drink with a sweet treat and of course a toy it was sold in a colored cardboard box marketed directly to children and first debuted in Kansas City 13 Red Bull was derived from a drink called
cting Dang if you're a sports fan then you know how strong the name Red Bull is the company owns a Formula 1 team a collection of football clubs and sponsors almost every extreme sport but where does the original Red Bull come from it was invented by a Time businessman named Chalo yuya during the 1970s the concoction was made up of caffeine sugar vitamins and the energy boosting chemical torine he named the drink krating dang which translates to Red Bull it only became a global phenomenon after an Austrian entrepreneur visited Thailand in 1982 and tried the
product for himself he then struck up a partnership with yoya who took 51% of the new company and the drink was adapted to Western tastes Who would know it by its English name apparently the secret to creating a billion- dollar company is going on a holiday 12 the Benton gor Tree in Malaysia may cure AIDS hiv/ AIDS is a devastating disease affecting tens of millions all over the world currently the standard treatment is to prescribe a number of medications however a tree in Malaysia may offer a radically different kind of treatment the Bangor tree contains
a rare compound known as chanoly a which has been found to be effective against HIV and tests containing cultured cells and animal models 11 Rome has a museum dedicated to Pasta Italians take a lot of things very seriously coffee football and above all else pasta along with Pizza Pasta has by far been the country's most successful export so why would there be a museum for it located in Rome the M de takes visitors through the history of pasta the way different kinds are made and even artwork made using pasta it was all started by the
Agassi family who have produced pasta since 1824 and want to teach the public about the rich history of pasta it's more than just spaghetti and meatballs 10 the city of Mumbai was formed from Seven Islands Mumbai an Indian city home to over 12 million people people used to be known as Bombay it was once made up of seven different disconnected Islands when the British got control of it they oversaw the construction of embankments flatten the area and disposing of rubble into the water until the land was poking out Above It wasn't until 1784 that the
Hornby Ard created a strong mud embankment enabling it to be drained and making it habitable now some of these areas that were once underwater a home to mumbai's richest residence nine New York's Hog Island mysteriously vanished can you imagine your favorite vacation destination disappearing overnight at the time of the Civil War in the mid 19th century residents of Long Island noticed that an island seemed to suddenly emerge made up of piling sand the island continued to expand for as long as a mile and was given the name Hog Island it didn't take long for the
area to become a summer hit with restaurants and bars popping up seemingly overnight then after an intense hurricane that swept New York in 1893 the majority of the island seemed to Simply vanish over the next few decades it completely retreated back into the ocean easy come easy go I guess eight the iconic palm trees of Los Angeles were imported from Mexico home to Hollywood Santa Monica and Venice Beach Los Angeles has a reputation for Being Sunny all year round and what's better for Beach weather than palm trees lining high above the road palm trees in
La first came with Spanish missionaries way back in the 18th century they've become iconic especially the Mexican fan Palms imported from Mexico in preparation for the 1932 Olympics tens of thousands were planted around the city to invite tourists seven Tokyo Subways have dedicated pushers as if commuting to work every day on public transportation isn't bad enough imagine doing it in Tokyo with a massive complex underground rail system there isn't always space at least not if you let people take their own that's where the osia comes in which is training staff employed to do one thing
push as many people in as possible dressed in Long coats and white gloves they wait for crowds to form around the carriage doors before cramming them all inside just make sure you aren't in the middle of the crowd when it's your stop which happened to me I was in Tokyo in rush hour and you get there and suddenly you're like there's no way more people can fit on this train sure enough they pushed them all in and I was Square in the middle and my stop was next and I'm like boy I sure hope a
lot of people get out or else I am missing my stop so yeah take my word for it try not to be in the middle in the subway during rush hour if you're in Tokyo personal experience six the empty building in the middle of Time Square the building where the biggest LCD screens are propped up is called One Time Square it was turned into a permanent billboard after the Leman brothers who bought it in 1995 made it into some of the most expensive real estate for advertising in the world however despite this value the building
has been virtually empty for decades for most companies the strange layout and aging interior just aren't appealing plus it's probably not ideal to look outside your office window to see the back of a billboard five Old Sacramento underneath the city the Old Sacramento State Historic Park has preserved more than a dozen buildings in the city some dating back more than 150 years but the real history of this town is beneath the surface in The Craze of the Gold Rush that swept California in 1848 Sacramento was quickly converted into a town for eager gold Hunters when
the nearby River flooded a decade later thousands of residents in the town were killed leaving over 250 Mi of Sacramento underwater town planners came up with a radical but necessary plan to Simply raise it the buildings the streets everything was raised 10 ft buildings were separated from foundations raised into the air and suspended on pieces of wood before mud and sand were stuck in the middle and just like Venice it worked four Port Royal the wickedest city on earth speaking of submerged cities Port Royal in Jamaica was left underwater after earthquakes devastated the city in
1692 Port Royal became Infamous as a meeting point for pirates criminals and sex workers and home to Kill Devil rum a near deadly alcohol with debauchery filling the city when a massive earthquake hit in 1692 you'd be forgiven for thinking it was some kind of divine intervention One Survivor described the event as the Earth opening up and swallowing people around 33 Acres were carved off the coastal town and disappeared into the sea while between 1,000 and 3,000 people lost their lives talk about paying for your sins three Norway is unlikely colonel-in-chief in Edinburgh ever feel
like animals don't get enough credit well that might be true in most countries but in Norway things are different not only are animals respected but they can reached the highest levels of society look no further than Major General Sir Ola III this General is the colonel-in-chief of the royal Battalion oh and by the way he lives in Edinburgh at the Edinburgh Zoo and he's a penguin he's also the third generation of his family to take up the honor hence his name the major general wears his rank on his right arm and attends important military ceremonies
luckily Norway doesn't have too many enemies two Australia's first police force was con icts we all know the story of Australia convicts from Britain sent 9,000 Mi to a distant Colony but with a population mostly made up of convicts there wasn't much choice to fill jobs even the police force in 1789 when the night watch was created it need to be manned with volunteers who were of course convicts at that time most of them had committed fairly minor crimes like theft this volunteer Force eventually grew into becoming the established police force that still exists today
one gnak Croatia a romantically shaped island thinking about the perfect place to propose how about a gorgeous island in the southern part of Croatia called gnack it's better known as lovers Island and it's no wonder why it's shaped almost like a perfect heart unfortunately though the island is under special protection and only allowed to be entered with a permit but the owners have the intention of opening it up for weddings one day so what's the strange fact about your city or town or Village or wherever let me know in the comments below also don't forget
to like share comment subscribe hit that notification Bell and check out our social medias including my personal ones links in that description and if you like this video you'll absolutely want to check out 25 most bizarre cities and towns you'll ever visit it's actually one of our older videos wand did the narration on this one so click here check that out go live old list 25 just man that video is 9 years old oh my time flies still check it out miss you one
