3rd January: San Francisco

The California town of Yerba Buena was renamed on this date in 1848. Its new name? San Francisco. 

1. San Francisco was originally named Yerba Buena, meaning "good herb" after the wild Mint which grew nearby. The first mayor changed the town's name in 1848, naming it after a mission dedicated to St Francis of Assisi. It has several nicknames, including "The City by the Bay", "Fog City", "San Fran", and "Frisco", "The City that Knows How", "Baghdad by the Bay", "The Paris of the West", or simply "The City".
2. As cities go, it's relatively small - seven miles long by seven miles wide, with a population of around 830,000. The people must like to eat out, as there are are more than 3,500 restaurants open in the city at any one time.
3. One thing the city is famous for is the massive Earthquake in 1906, the first natural disaster to be photographed. Contrary to popular belief, most of the damage wasn't done by the earthquake itself, but by the fires which started afterwards. There are hundreds of earthquakes in the area every year, but the vast majority are so small you can't feel them. All the same, buildings are designed to withstand bigger quakes, including the airport, which is supported by 267 columns that each rest on a steel ball bearing, allowing the ground to move 20 inches in any direction during an earthquake. It's said that the names of streets (complete with spelling mistakes) are stamped onto the sidewalks so people can find their way after a big quake when all the other signs have fallen down. In fact, the sidewalk stamps pre-dated any other signs - it was simply the way streets were labelled in the early days.
4. The city is built on more than 50 hills. Some of the best known are Russian Hill, Nob Hill, Telegraph Hill, Twin Peaks, Golden Mine Hill, Excelsior Heights, and Tank Hill, but there are more than 50 hills with names.
5. San Francisco has the only National Historic Landmark that moves - the Cable Cars, which run at 9.5 miles an hour.
6. Lombard Street in San Francisco is known for being “the crookedest street in the world.” Locals will tell you that Vermont Street in Potrero Hill is crookeder. It has less turns, but it's steeper.
7. Famous people from the city include Clint Eastwood, Bruce Lee, Alicia Silverstone, Natalie Wood, Jerry Garcia, Robert Frost and the eccentric Joshua Abraham Norton, who proclaimed himself Emperor of the United States in 1859. Inventions which started life here include the Fortune cookie (first served by Makoto Hagiwara in his tea garden in the late 1890s), denim jeans (created for the Gold rush miners who needed tough, durable clothing), the bendy Drinking Straw (Joseph B. Friedman invented this after his daughter had difficulty drinking with a straight one). The first television image was transmitted in San Francisco on September 7, 1927 by Philo Taylor Farnsworth.
8. San Francisco Bay is only as deep as a swimming pool at approximately 12-15 feet deep on average. Large ships can only navigate it through a deep channel which is maintained by regular dredging. Another misconception about the bay is that it is infested with man-eating Sharks. There are sharks living in the bay, but only small, harmless ones. The Great Whites live out in the Pacific Ocean and rarely pay a visit.
9. It is illegal to beat a rug clean outside your home in San Francisco. It's also illegal to bury people within the city limits and has been since 1902, because there's not enough room. They even moved most of the existing graves out of the city, so only two cemeteries remain - the Mission San Francisco de Asis and the National Cemetery in the Presidio. There was even a law once making it illegal for ugly people to show themselves in public, but that one was repealed.
10. The  Accordion is San Francisco's official musical instrument. That's a relatively modern thing - the Board of Supervisors voted for this in 1990.