Manchester is the city that invented the modern world. Not metaphorically – literally. The world’s first industrial city, the first place where steam power transformed manufacturing at urban scale, the location of the Liverpool Road terminus of the world’s first inter-city passenger railway in 1830. The city where John Dalton developed atomic theory, where James

York is a city built in layers. The Romans founded Eboracum here in 71 AD and built the fortress that is still visible in the Multangular Tower in the Museum Gardens. The Vikings captured it in 866 AD, called it Jórvík, and settled it so thoroughly that the entire Viking-era city was discovered intact beneath

Hawaii is the only US state made entirely of islands. It is the only US state where coffee is commercially grown. It is the only US state that was once a sovereign monarchy with its own royal family, its own flag, and its own language – a kingdom that existed for nearly a century before

Amsterdam has 900,000 bicycles for a population of 900,000 people. The city has more bikes than residents. On any given morning, the number of cyclists crossing the Magere Brug on their way to work exceeds the number of cars on the same bridge by a ratio that would be considered impossible in any other major

Portland, Oregon is the only major American city with an extinct volcano inside its city limits. Mount Tabor, a shield volcano in the middle of a residential neighborhood on the east side, last erupted approximately 300,000 years ago and is now a public park with hiking trails, picnic areas, and a reservoir. Most of the

Vancouver, British Columbia is the only major city in North America where you can ski a mountain in the morning and swim in the Pacific Ocean in the afternoon of the same day. Grouse Mountain to Kitsilano Beach is 30 minutes by car. This is not a brochure claim – I have done it, on

The Cancun Hotel Zone is a 22-kilometer sandbar. That is the geographic fact the all-inclusive resort industry was built around – a narrow strip of Caribbean coastline so perfectly positioned between the turquoise sea and the calm Nichupte Lagoon that developers in the 1970s recognized it as the most buildable beach real estate in the

Gatlinburg, Tennessee has a permanent population of approximately 4,000 people. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park at the end of its main street receives 14 million visitors per year – more than Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Zion National Park combined. You can walk from a pancake house on the Parkway to the entrance of