My home towns claim to fame

[alan1254]

I origionaly wrote this a couple of years ago for a US forum not realy history as such but lots of historical points , anyone want to do one for their home or adopted town

Manchester

Manchester was the worlds first industrialized city, on the cutting edge of technology a kind of silicone valley of its time with the worlds first full scale factories as we would know them. A result of this was the production of cotton goods, for a long period the only place in the world with cotton ‘factories’ or mills, which were shipped around the world including Africa where they were exchanged for slaves who were shipped to the ‘new world’ then cotton picked by the slaves was shipped to Manchester to make cotton clothing , without Manchester’s leap into modern production there would have been no large scale slavery in the US an Caribbean.

The first computer
Geoff Tootill, who as an assistant to Freddie Williams and Tom Kilburn made history as part of the team of engineers who built the first stored program computer, will have the newly refurbished Tootill Teaching Laboratory in the University's School of Computer Science named after him.
It was 11:00am on Monday June 21st 1948 when Tom Kilburn and Geoff knew they'd made history having just witnessed their small experimental machine, affectionately known as Baby, execute a stored computer program to calculate the highest factor of a number successfully.
Then between late 1948 and late 1949, in two or three incremental stages, they went on to produce the Manchester Mark 1. This in turn was used as the basis of the design of the world's first general-purpose commercial computer, the Ferranti Mark 1. Geoff Tootill moved to Ferranti in order to apply his expertise in helping to produce the Ferranti Mark 1.
Granada TV is reputed to be the 4th largest producer of programming after the big 3 American stations. Without them no Coronation Street!! or hundreds of other drama productions

Some of the music from Manchester

Stone Roses
Oasis
Simply Red
Bee Gees (born isle of man raised in Prestwich Manchester)
Buzzcocks and lots of other ‘ punk’ bands
Mick Hucknell Simply Red
The Smiths famously shooting a video outside Salford boys club and the street it stands on the ‘real’ Coronation St Salford
10 CC
Happy Mondays
Joy Division / New Order
The Fall
Tony Wilson , Factory records and the Hacienda club famous as the birth place of the modern DJ and the first ‘raves’ 2 phenomena that swept the world. Also of note Maddona played her first UK gig there to a reputed crowd of 30 only to return to the UK 3 months later for her ‘first UK’ London gig which was a sell out.
Marx and Engles got together at the city library to read and discuss a new idea that they thought would be good for the world, we ended up with communism. It was decided at the height of the cold war to put England’s center of emergency communications just a few hundred yards from the library because it was rumoured that the Kremlin would never drop a bomb on the birthplace of communism. The Library was also the site of the Emily Pankhursts first speeches that in the end led to women around the world getting the vote.
Manchester is also the Home of the worlds biggest sports club Manchester United, yes they are far bigger than any NFL club with more fans worldwide than all NFL clubs put together.

Dna was first clearly identified at Manchester University and the first criminal conviction in the world based on DNA was analyzed in the same lab.
The baggy clothes and hooded tops still a must have for young criminals of the western world
Was originally the ‘uniform’ of a Salford street gang.
Manchester has the second biggest Chinese community in the west after San Francisco

The VEGETARIANISM movement
began in 1815 in the Salford Bible Christian Church, inspired by the sermons of the local preacher, named, of all things, the Rev. William Cowherd. A vegetarian cookbook was published here by Martha Brotherton in 1821 and her husband Joseph was the first vegetarian MP.
Mr Rolls and Mr Royce set up their first mechanics garage in Hulme and produced the first rolls royce
SPLITTING THE ATOM
Ernest Rutherford working at Manchester University discovered how to split the atom in 1919…. wonder what they could use that for ?
The first steamboats operated on the Bridgewater Canal in 1773.
RAILWAY AND RAILWAY STATION
The worlds first true railway started operating from a purpose built station on Liverpool Road in 1830. Other places had used steam engines but the Liverpool and Manchester Railway had the lot, including steam locomotives throughout (no horse drawn carriages), two tracks, timetables and proper stations. It also got the attention of the world's press and started the global stampede for railways.
AIRLINE SERVICES
Propably the world's first scheduled airline service was set up in 1919 between Manchester and Southport.
TRANS-ATLANTIC FLIGHT
Former Manchester Central High School students , J.W. Alcock and A.W. Brown, were the first to fly the Atlantic Ocean, non-stop, in 1919.
LONELY HEARTS
Helen Morrison was perhaps the first Briton to advertise for a husband in 1727 in the Manchester Weekly Advertiser. She was later sent to a lunatic asylum.

Manchester also has the worlds first purpose built UFO airport UFO LANDING PAD
In the new Hulme Park there is a UFO airport located on so-called ley lines. The potential of the site was pointed out by local Geomantics. But everyone probably thought they were crazy when they opened the worlds first railway station in manchester and that caught on

[Skylace]

Some pretty interesting stuff there.

I will be doing my best to learn more about Pittsburgh now that I am here. I have to get myself out there and get myself reading as well. The city really does have a very rich history from what I have seen so far.

[faceless]

My home town has the highest murder rate in Europe and the lowest average age before death - beat that!

I'll add more in later though as there really is a lot to know about the place.

[Brown Sauce]

jerome k jerome, and someone from corrie, i forget who .. it was once infamously likened to chauchesku's hungary with mac donalds. the new art gallery is very good though.

[Skylace]

Huang Xiang was born in Hunan Province, China, in 1941.

Huang began writing poems in the 1950s and has been imprisoned repeatedly for his work. In 1978, he founded “Enlightenment,” the first underground writers’ society, and started a literary magazine with the same title. In exile in the United States since 1997, he is currently resident poet in Pittsburgh under the Cities of Asylum program for writers.

Huang has published poems and essays, and his Out of Communist China, a bilingual selection, was published in 2003.

______________________
I saw him just on the 8th of this month. He was amazing and his home "House Poem" is a site to see.

[Twirley]

Oh I've seen that house - you can stand in front of it for ages in awe. Did you try out the Mattress Factory? It sometimes has some stuff that makes you feel really weird.

[Skylace]

[luke]

not where i was born, but where i spent most of my time growing up ( back and forth between divorced parents! ) has had a few famous residents ...

page 3 girl melinda messenger! ( i've seen her out - shes so tiny in real life, except the obvious of course hehe )
chris evans' teenage bridge - bllie piper!
diana doors ( she has a statue outside the cinema )
techno dj dave angel
meat beat manifesto
mark lamar
gilbert o'sullivan

and last but not least ...

julian clairy

it used to be the fastest growing town in europe, its horrible now - just housing estates with the odd shopping complex now and then, although its countryside all around and only an hour on the train to london

its also had the highest teenage pregnancy rate in europe! not sure if it still does ...

my sister is 21, still lives there, with her 3 kids