I lived in St. Louis, Missouri for much of my childhood so here are some random facts about that city:

  • St. Louis hosted the 1904 Olympics and World’s Fair. At that time it was the 4th largest city in the US. The 1904 Olympic marathon was probably the craziest in history (look it up).

  • There was originally going to be a Disneyland in St. Louis since Walt Disney grew up in Missouri, but the legend is that Walt Disney canceled it after one of the Busch dudes insulted him for not including beer in the park.

  • The Arch was an urban renewal project and involved demolishing the historic riverfront and replacing it with a giant metal catenary thingy. It’s also a national park for some stupid reason, and in fact the smallest national park in the US.

  • The architect who designed the Twin Towers also designed the failed Pruitt-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis, and all three of those buildings were demolished on live TV.

  • St. Louis is one of the three independent cities in the US outside of Virginia, meaning St. Louis city and St. Louis county are two separate entities. (The other two are Carson City and Baltimore.) This contributed to revenue problems starting in the 1950s.

  • The World Chess Hall of Fame is in St. Louis.

  • There’s a UNESCO World Heritage site right across the river, Cahokia mounds.

  • The filmmakers for the 1981 film Escape from New York had a dilemma: The film was set in post-apocalyptic New York but they didn’t have the budget to make a destroyed version of New York. Instead, they looked for “the worst city in America” and ended up filming in run-down parts of St. Louis.

  • North St. Louis has an especially large number of chop suey restaurants compared to other American cities. The St. Louis Chinatown was demolished in 1966 to make way for a baseball stadium, so many restaurants moved to low-income neighborhoods in north St. Louis instead. Many of restaurants sell the iconic St. Paul sandwich which ironically isn’t sold in St. Paul.

  • There’s a landfill with radioactive waste next to the airport, visible if you land on runway 11/29. (The airport is also too large for the city and only about 50% used.)