San Fransisco Facts

Here are some interesting facts about San Fransisco...


The Chinese Fortune Cookie was invented by Makato Hagiwara whose family operated the Japanese Tea Garden from 1895 to 1942.

Denim jeans were invented in San Francisco for the Gold Rush miners who needed tough, comfortable clothing

Irish coffee was invented in San Francisco.

Francis Ford Coppola famously wrote large portions of The Godfather Trilogy in Caffe Trieste, the first San Francisco coffee shop, established in 1956

There are over three hundred coffee houses within the city boundaries of San Francisco

The original United Nations charter was drafted and signed in San Francisco.

Al Capone spent five years in prison in Alcatraz.

The original Spanish name for San Francisco was Yerba Buena, meaning "good herb" or"good grass".

Nicknames include "Baghdad by the Bay", coined by columnist Herb Caen, and "The City that Knows How".

The first plans of the city were drawn by Jean-Jacques Vioget (Swiss) and Jasper O' Farell ( Irish)

The first construted street was Grant Street, originally named " Calle De La Fundacion "

Chop Suey was created in 1878 during a banquet or Li Hung-Chung, the first Chinese Viceroy to visit our city.

There are over 250 wineries in the nearby Napa Valley.

Muir Woods, an unspoiled stand of giant redwoods, is just across the Golden Gate bridge.

In Star Trek, Star Fleet HQ is located just north of San Francisco.

"I Left My Heart In San Francisco" was written by a gay couple, Douglass Cross and his partner George Cory in 1954. Tony Bennett's recording in 1962 made the song famous.

San Francisco is built on 43 hills.

The crookedest street is not Lombard Street , Vermont Avenue between 22nd and 23rd is the "crookedest,".

Filbert between Hyde and Leavenworth is the steepest street at 31.5 degrees.

The population of San Francisco at the end of 2004 was 744,230 people

San Francisco has the highest number of homeless inhabitants per capita of any major city in the United States.

Washington Square Park at Columbus & Union is not actually a square because it has five sides. But then North Beach isn't a beach and the statue in the middle of the park is Ben Franklin not George Washington.

Behind New York, Moscow and London, San Francisco is 4th in the world in terms of numbers of billionaires living within its city limits, while having less than 10% the population of the the other three cities.

On Mar 14,1896, 7000 people gathered at San Francisco's Ocean Beach to celebrate the official opening of the Sutro Baths, an extravagant public bathhouse envisioned and developed by the eccentric one-time mayor of San Francisco, Adolph Sutro. He also built the Cliff House.

Soon after the Golden Gate Park opened in 1890, John McLaren, the park's designer added a free-range zoo that was home to elk, bears, goats, and buffalo. The buffalo are the only ones that remain.

On Mar. 21, 1963, Alcatraz federal prison island in San Francisco Bay was emptied of its last inmates at the order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

San Francisco Bay is considered the world's largest landlocked harbor.


Source: sfheart.com