Today is the birth date of George Vancouver, the explorer who carried out surveys of North America and after whom Vancouver, British Columbia is named. He was born in 1757. 10 things you might not know about Vancouver:
It wasn’t always called Vancouver. The original name was Granville and the settlement had sprung up around a saloon. This area of the city is now known as Gastown, a nod to the owner of the bar, one Captain John Deighton, also known as “Gassy Jack” because he talked too much. In 1886 Granville was incorporated as the City of Vancouver.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest port in Canada and has the fourth largest cruise ship terminal in the world. Most of the cruise liners departing from there are going to Alaska.
Vancouver has the world’s longest swimming pool. It’s a saltwater pool called Kits Pool and at 137.5 meters (451 feet) it is the size of three Olympic pools.
It also has the world’s narrowest building, the Sam Kee Building, which is only six feet wide.
And then there is the world’s largest tin soldier in the Vancouver Metropolitan area. It is 9.75 metres tall and weighs 4540 kilograms.
Vancouver has more parks than any other city in the world. The largest of them is Stanley Park which takes up 1001 acres, making it 10% larger than New York City’s Central Park. All the grey Squirrels found in the park are descendants of eight pairs of grey squirrels Vancouver was given by New York City in 1909.
The eco-activist group Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver 1971.
The cosmetic treatment Botox was invented in Vancouver.
Vancouver is twinned with Odessa, Ukraine; Yokohama, Japan; Edinburgh, Scotland; Guangzhou, China and Los Angeles, USA.
Vancouver has the only working wind turbine in the world that has a viewing platform, called “The Eye of The Wind” on top of Grouse Mountain.
New!!!
The six richest people in Britain decide to hold a contest to settle the question of which of them is most successful. It will be a gladiator style contest with each entrant fielding a team of ten super-powered combatants. Entrepreneur Llew Powell sets out to put together his team, which includes his former lover, an employee of his company with a fascinating hobby, two refugees from another dimension (a lonely giant and a drunken sailor), two sisters bound together by a promise, a diminutive doctor, a former Tibetan monk initiate and two androids with a history. As the team train together, alliances form, friendships and more develop, while others find the past is not easy to leave behind.
Meanwhile, a ruthless race of aliens has its eyes on the Earth. Already abducting and enslaving humans, they work towards the final invasion which would destroy life on Earth as we know it. Powell’s group, Combat Team Alpha, stumble upon one of the wormholes the aliens use to travel to Earth and witness for themselves the horrors in store if the aliens aren’t stopped. Barely escaping with their lives, they realise there are more important things to worry about than a fighting competition.
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