5 Things You Should Know About New York

The most densely inhabited city in the United States is house to some of the nation’s most strange history. In 1626, Manhattan was bought for 60 guilders (about $1,000 nowadays). initially known as New Amsterdam, the English renamed it when they stole it back from the Dutch. George Washington was inaugurated here because Washington, DC had yet to be formed. Prior to the shows on Broadway, New York City was the theater for a series of crucial battles for the period of the American Revolutionary War. Along the way, the city has been filled with pirates, prostitutes, punk rockers, gangs and -- and those are just the facts you found in history class. The followings are the things you’ve never heeded about New York City.

1- The "Big Apple" was made in horse racing
Touring jazz musicians started calling New York City the "Big Apple in the early '30s." A famous song and dance arose by the same name. People thought the slang derived from vaudeville. Vaudevillian Billy Tucker called New York the "Big Apple" in the Chicago Defender newspaper as early as 1922. New York City was the premier place to perform, so it fit the old show-business saying: “There are many apples on the tree, but only one Big Apple.” Nevertheless, more lately it’s been revealed that the horse racing writer John J. Fitz Gerald first used it in a 1921 article for the New York Morning Telegraph. He heard the term around the stables of New Orleans from guys who aimed to race on the big New York City tracks.

2- New York City has the lowest rate of big-city crime
Lower Manhattan alone housed over 200 brothels and an estimated 75% of New York men had some form of STD in the 19th century. Allegedly, the word "hooker" came from the streetwalkers in Corlaer's Hook, a notorious Big Apple prostitution spot. Fast-forward through that era, past organized crime, the 1980s crack epidemic, the Latin Kings, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and into Mayor Bloomberg’s reign and now New York has been reporting the lowest crime rate amongst major American cities since 2005. A major step taken to decrease the crime rate was the attempt to clean up Times Square and its longstanding sex industry.

3- Gangs of New York wasn't fiction
Daniel Day-Lewis’ character Bill "The Butcher" Cutting is inspired by a real-life Bill the Butcher. An affiliate of the Bowery Boys gang and bare-knuckle boxer, he disfigured a number of his opponents in brawls. He also owned a butcher shop. In the film, Bill fought the Dead Rabbits -- a real 1800s Irish gang. Their ridiculous name is wordplay on Irish-American slang. "Rabbit" is a phonetic corruption of the Irish word ráibéad, meaning "man to be feared." "Dead" is slang for "very." The merely gang with a worse name was The Roach Guards, whom the Rabbits formerly split from.

4- Subway musicians have to audition in New York City
173,000 people will walk through the subway stop at Times Square on a tuesday. That’s almost 10 times the audience at a sold-out Jay-Z show at Madison Square Garden. A busker can create nearly $60 in loose change and think it one of the world’s top gigs. That’s why, since 1985, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority program holds competitive auditions for musicians, some of whom have even played Carnegie Hall. The best will get two-week permits to perform at prime spots on the subway platforms.

5 - Washington Square Park used as a site for public executions
The area was used as a graveyard for strangers to the city starting from year 1700’s. Burials were done in a burlap sack and not a coffin for cost reasons. The trees and grass grew strong over the century with the dead bodies supplying nutrients for the soil, and it became a common grazing area for horses. The Yellow Fever epidemic was filling the field with hundreds of bodies by the 1790’s. At last, someone perceived the strong elms surrounding this common death site and started staging public hangings there. The infamous Hangman’s Elm still stands in the northwest corner of the park.