1. The famous Hollywood sign is actually only a partial of the original, it first appeared as Hollywoodland.
2. And Hollywoodland wasn’t a billboard for the not-so-shiny place of today, it was an advertisement for a new real estate development with lots of potential.
3. Oh, Charlie Sheen. Deciding he wanted to catch a fly ball, he purchased 2,615 outfield seats for a game at the Angels Stadium in 1996. He was not winning then, though, and didn’t catch a single one.
4. When people think of shopping in L.A. it’s probably not at the coroner’s office, but they’ve got a gift shop, too. Just in case.
5. Blame or thank Thomas Edison for L.A.’s film industry. He held so many film patents in New Jersey that filmmakers took off toward the opposite coast just to have rights to do their job without fear of infringement.
6. Sixty-five Angelenos are legally named Jesus Christ.
7. For anyone unsure of whether or not they’re breaking the law in L.A., it is illegal to lick a toad.
8. Or wear a baggy, or zoot, suit. This is for fashion’s sake, not just because of the zoot suit riot in 1943. OK, maybe it’s because of the riot.
9. Or have more than one child under the age of two in a bathtub at the same time. But good luck enforcing that one.
10. Or cry on the witness stand.
11. Lima bean ranch and shopping haven for the elite. The Jeopardy answer is: What is Beverly Hills known for? Before “Pretty Woman” was turned away from these classy stores, it was originally a ranch for little green lima beans.
12. The Getty Museum wins for creativity by bringing in goats every year to do their yard work, cleaning up the shrubs and such. Just another day in the life of a goat.
13. In 2006 while digging up the parking garage for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, they hit a rock, er, actually it was the complete skeleton of an adult mammoth, among other awesome fossil finds. They’re still brushing off dirt and finding centuries old bones.
14. L.A. beats the rest of Cali in the hamburger eating competition (there isn’t one, but if there were)—they eat four times as many as the rest of the state.
15. The city has something against pickles as well because manufacturing them inside the industrial zone of downtown is illegal. How anyone gets a pickle with their sandwich is a mystery.
16. L.A. is coming for you, San Francisco. In the most intense, slow-mo chest bump ever, the two cities shift towards each other 2.5 inches every year.
17. If machines came to life and started a revolt, L.A. would have no chance because people are outnumbered by cars.
18. There’s something to be said when doctors go on strike and then hospital fatalities go down, but that’s exactly what happened in 1976. The physicians took a hike and daily deaths dropped by 20%.
19. It seems obvious that a record company would design its office building to also look like records, but Capitol Records was the first to make a music inspired, circular office tower in 1956.
20. Although the city is known to most as just two letters, before it was L.A. it was originally named “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora Reina de los Angeles sobre el Rio Porciuncula” meaning “The town of our lady queen of the angels on the Porciuncula River.” Thankfully, it was later shortened. And shortened again.
21. But when it was the city of 13 words, it had only 44 residents.
22. Saying you’re from Los Angeles doesn’t mean much now, though, because there are more than 88 different cities within the city within the... it’s become a big place.
23. So big, in fact, it has six different area codes, which is more than any other US city can say.
24. Every day Los Angeles is host to more than 100 movie and television crews actively filming their respective shows.
25. It’s true about the waiters. Well, maybe. But the artists residing in L.A. do have an unprecedented presence compared to any other city throughout history. That’s a lot of actors and not as many acting jobs so be prepared for a monologue during the appetizers.
26. The upside of this is that the wait staff in L.A. is incomparably more attractive than other cities. They’re always auditioning.
27. The childhood favorite drink, The Shirley Temple, was invented in Los Angeles.
28. If L.A. became a state—some people think it’s a different world anyway—it would be the fifth largest based on population alone.
29. After the shortening of the initial name for Los Angeles, people started making up their own. Included in this list of nicknames are the City of Angels, Southland and Lalaland.
30. For any kid who hates being dragged to museums, L.A. is not a dream vacation. This city has the most in the country at 300 and counting.
31. Think oil’s only in the Middle East? Think again. L.A. has this country’s third-largest oil field.
32. Not only is Los Angeles the entrepreneurial capital of the world with around 200,000 small businesses, it really supports the ladies by having this country’s highest number of women-owned businesses.
33. L.A. hires more techies and media junkies than New York City and Silicon Valley combined.
34. Disneyland had the Western hemisphere’s first working monorail in the 1950s. Monorails were also much more impressive back then.
35. Walt Disney Concert Hall hired construction workers to sand its steel walls after completion because the reflection heated the sidewalks up to 140 degrees. Talk about an ant massacre.
36. City Hall has California pride built right in, literally. Its concrete was made with sand from 58 counties around the state.
37. It isn’t just filled with blonde bombshells. There are people from 140 countries calling L.A. home.
38. Over the last 10 years L.A. has become the safest big city in America. So stop trying to make those weird hand symbols, gangs are not in anymore.
39. In a city that has grown impressively fast, there are two towers that are famed for their slow construction. The Watts Towers were built by just one man over the course of 33 years, in his spare time.
40. While, at times, L.A. is synonymous with smog, the city is actually the front runner for Energy Efficient Buildings.
41. Invention and ingenuity extends to architecture in L.A. because of the very real presence of earthquakes. The Chateau Marmont Hotel is an impressive bit of that architecture because it has been completely earthquake proof, surviving every major earthquake since its construction.
42. Roughly 100,000 L.A. women go under the knife each year for the infamous boob job.
43. It’s not sunny all summer long and there’s even a name for it: June Gloom. Yes, that means there are clouds, actual clouds in the sky. It’s just horrible.
44. Los Angeles is basically a desert. Except for the times it floods, it only gets about 15 in. of rain a year.
45. You can thank L.A. for being able to read this article on the fancy shmancy internet. Actually thank Leonard Kleinrock of UCLA since he sent the first signal in 1969. Only about 30 years later did everyone else get to play, too.
Featured Image Source: Flickr user Ryan Vaarsi
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