Your home town's claim to fame

[Singularly Datarific]

Pasadena, California.
Lemme think for a minute...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_of_Roses_Parade
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Bowl_Game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Institute_of_Technology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPL

So yeah, we're pretty much awesome.

 

[rob_simple]

We started E.Coli. You're welcome, world.

 

[DarkRyter]

We're apparently the most haunted city in America.

Also, we sell private jets.

 

[Anthony Wells]

Las Vegas Nevada...claim to fame.. gambling capital of the world. city of lights. so on and so forth.

 

[Okamipsychonaut]

My hometown of Astoria, Oregon.....most people know it for film the Goonies, and I was living there and going to junior high when it was filmed. My brother went to the same kindergarten where Kindergarten Cop was filmed. Also Short Circuit and a bad Lovecraft film, and the American version of the Ring 2, which I have never seen.
Astoria, not unlike Portland where I live now had a seedy Shanghai Kidnapping past... the population there in the early days dwarfed the population now with people from all over the world coming to work in the timber and fishing industries.

In 1948, a guy named Leroy E. Parsons was the first to use coaxial cable, amplifiers and a community antenna to deliver television to the remote Astoria in 1948. Not the first cable TV ever, but the first done in this way.


Astoria is near the end of the Oregon trail and the area is steeped in Native American sites and lore.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

My home town of Union City, Pa made it to number one on a David Letterman top 10 list some years back.

For what?

Town with the highest teen pregnancy rate of the country....

Better than nothing, I say. Just tell people it leads in test scores, and leave out that it's pregnancy tests.

Anyway, fucking nothing. Partly because I don't live in a town, but also because there's like 400 people there. The nearest city's claim to fame is that there was a shooting there a few years back, and the whole area has a 500 year flood every five years, and that is not hyperbole.

 

[Leodiensian]

I'm from Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. We used to be big in the fabric industry. Now? We're big in serial killers.

The Yorkshire Ripper, who was technically from Bradford (the town next door), did most of his work around Leeds.

We gave Dr. Harold Shipman, the most prolific serial killer in history, his medical license. That's the centre of a Wikipedia edit war; the "Notable Alumni" section of the Leeds School of Medicine includes him, but periodically someone (presumably a Leeds medic) will remove him. Then someone will put him back on. Technically, he was an alumnus and he IS rather notable...

Oh, and we have the Royal Armories. It's kind of like the Tower of London, in that it's a repository and museum of weaponry and armour. It's notable for having one of the only sets of elephant armour (elephant. armour) in the world.

 

[lacktheknack]

Edmonton, Alberta. We have the biggest mall in North America (in terms of land covered, anyways), have famously cold winters (not really happening so far this year) and are the capitol of the province.

 

[Montezuma's Lawyer]

Melbourne, Florida?

Our only real claim to fame is being confused with Melbourne, Australia occasionally.

Oh, and we had an underground slavery ring here until 1911...

Yep...

 

[RaNDM G]

Moreno Valley. We gave the world Alien Ant Farm.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

Bass Pro Shop. The first ever, and largest (takes up a few city blocks).
I went to the same high school as Brad Pitt, and I can see why he never comes back to visit.
We're are also the buckle of the bible belt, which really sucks.

 

[TheCruxis]

My hometown is the birthplace of the famous childbook author Astrid Lindgren and they try to make as much money of that as they can cause there is absolutly no other reason to visit the place.

 

[Leodiensian]

Moreno Valley. We gave the world Alien Ant Farm.

WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT

 

[Okamipsychonaut]

The lovely Portland Oregon is famous for some of the best beer in the world, the biggest independently owned bookstore in the world (powells), and most strip clubs per capita.

Noteable celebrities who call Portland home include Matt Groening (who graduated from my high school) and The Decemberists, an awesome chart-topping indie band.

Portland also has Dark Horse comics, Will Vinton studios, Laika studios, and tons of other up and coming comic books writers and artists....and the HP Lovecraft film festival is held here. DB Cooper hijacked the Boeing 727 here in Portland. President George Bush the first called us Little Beirut.
Grim is filmed here and all the trendy name drops of Voodoo donuts and such make me sick.

 

[DSK-]

Please bear in mind that some of this is ripped from Wikipedia.

The name Rickmansworth comes from the Saxon name "Ryckmer", the local magnate, and "worth" meaning farm or stockade. In the Domesday Book of 1086 it is known as The Manor of Prichemaresworde. Later spellings are Rykemarwurthe (1119?46), Richemaresworthe (1180), Rykemerewrthe (1248), Richemereworthe (1259), Rikesmareswrth (1287) and Rikmansworth (1382).

Regarding William Penn - He stayed in Rickmansworth for a time, and his house is now a museum for local history.

Also:

In 1677, a group of prominent Quakers that included Penn purchased the colonial province of West Jersey (half of the current state of New Jersey).[62] That same year, two hundred settlers from the towns of Chorleywood and Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire and other towns in nearby Buckinghamshire arrived, and founded the town of Burlington

That, and I suppose the fact that Rickmansworth is mentioned in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

 

[dreddfan]

My home town was Wolverhampton. It had the first automated traffic lights in Britain.

Noddy Holder is also from Wolverhampton.

 

[Elementary - Dear Watson]

Mine was the untimely death place for Eddie Cochran, the 50's rock-n-roll star! (Summertime Blues, C'mon everybody and Somethin' Else)

 

[Patrick Buck]

My town is home to one of the two crooked church spires in Britain apperently.
Huh.

 

[shadowshian]

Järvenpää home city for composer Jean Sibelius

 

[Zyra10]

Indianapolis, Indiana

The Indianapolis 500, of course.