29 March: Manchester

On this date in 1853, Manchester was granted city status. Here are 10 things you might not know about Manchester:

1. The Roman name for the area dates from AD 79. They named it Mamucium after two hills near the River Medlock. The name means “breast-shaped hill”. Although it was later re-named Manchester, the word for someone from Manchester, Mancunian, derives from the original name.
2. Manchester is the birth place of a number of things. One is vegetarianism, the virtues of which were first preached in a Salford chapel by the somewhat inappropriately named Reverend William Cowherd. His followers went on to form the Vegetarian Society. The Suffragette Movement began life in the city too when Emmeline Pankhurst founded the Women’s Social and Political Union in Manchester in 1903. The first M&S store was opened here, on Stretford Road in 1894. Rolls-Royce Limited was created over a lunch in Manchester in 1904 when Car salesman Charles Rolls met engineer Henry Royce at The Midland Hotel. Today, there's a statue at the hotel which commemorates their meeting. Finally, a meeting at Manchester’s Royal Hotel in 1888 saw the formation of the Football League.
3. A symbol of the city is the Manchester Bee. It was adopted as a symbol for the city in the 19th century and represents the industrious nature of the city and its people.
4. The Greater Manchester town of Wigan is home to the annual world pie eating championships which began in 1992. As befitting the area where vegetarianism began, the contest now features vegetarian pies as well as meat ones. In 2016 a pie was launched into space to promote the event.
5. Manchester University has a number of claims to fame, not least that 25 Nobel Prize winners worked or studied there. The first computer with stored memory, nicknamed "Baby" was built there in 1948. Earnest Rutherford became the first person to artificially create a nuclear reaction in a laboratory in Manchester. Graphene was discovered here by Professor Sir Andre Geim and Professor Sir Kostya Novoselov in 2004. One last fact about Manchester University is that it is the only place in the world where you can take a course in Mummy Studies. The University has its very own Mummy Tissue Bank.
6. In 2017, the city of Manchester was awarded City of Literature status by UNESCO. Only 28 other cities worldwide have been granted this, and only 3 in the UK – Norwich, Edinburgh and Nottingham. Criteria set to achieve this status includes the level of publishing, literary education, events, libraries, book shops and more in the city.
7. No doubt Manchester being home to the English-speaking world's first free public library helped. Chetham’s Library has been in use for over 350 years. The building it's in is even older, built in 1421, originally used as accommodation for priests of Manchester’s Collegiate Church.
8. Not to mention the classic novels that were written in or based on the city. Charles Dickens is reputed to have at least partly set his novel Hard Times in Manchester, because of its similarity to the fictional location of the story, Coketown. Charlotte Bronte began writing Jane Eyre in 1846, while staying in Hulme with her father, who was convalescing after cataract surgery. Frances Hodgson Burnett wrote much of The Secret Garden while visiting Salford's Buile Hill Park.
9. Manchester was the first city in the world to commemorate its LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) past by commissioning a local artist to set rainbow tiles into flagstones around the city, marking historical places of interest for the LGBT community.
10. Famous people from Manchester include Andy. Barry and Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis, Mick Hucknall of Simply Red, Davy Jones of The Monkees and Jason Orange of Take That; stand up comedians Les Dawson and Bernard Manning; Serial killer Myra Hindley; actors Mark Addy, Caroline Aherne and John Thaw; writer Anthony Burgess and former prime minister David Lloyd George.

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