Everyone around the world seems to be fascinated with the City of Los Angeles. While they may already know plenty of fun and interesting things about the “city of angels”, there are still plenty of weird facts they can still learn about the city.
1. The original name of the city was not Los Angeles. In fact, it was actually a Mexican town that was deemed by locals “El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora Reina de los Angeles sobre el Rio Porciuncula”. While this may mean nothing if you do not speak Spanish, it literally translates to “The town of our lady queen of the angels on the Porciuncula River”. Now that’s a fun fact that you can tell your friends at cocktail parties.
2. In an area where Dodger Stadium is now located, oil was found. This was back in 1892 but prospectors never took full advantage of the fact and so the Oil Kingdom of the South title eventually went to Texas.
3. Even though it was never fully exploited, Los Angeles still produced about one-quarter of the world’s oil. In fact, to this day, the city rests on top of one of the largest oil fields in the entire country.
4. Some time ago, an oil company made a deal with Beverly Hills High School to build an oil derrick on their property. As of the last check, it still pumps around 400 barrels of oil on a daily basis. The high school earns approximately $300,000 in royalty fees every year.
5. This may seem unusual to visitors but the coroner’s office in Los Angeles County actually has a gift shop. This is due in part to so many celebrities passing away. People feel a draw to them and want a simple memorial to remember their visit to the area.
6. In an interesting bit of film trivia, filmmaking began in Los Angeles because of Thomas Edison. But not because he wanted it to. In fact, back in New Jersey Edison held all of the copyright claims to certain filmmaking procedures. Filmmakers on the East Coast could not make a movie without paying Edison substantial fees to do so. So they decided to head west where they would be legally out of reach of his copyright claims. This was bad news for Edison but great news for the film industry later to be known as Hollywood.
7. People these days think of Beverly Hills as a bastion of obscene wealth. While it is exactly that currently, it wasn’t always that way. In fact, Beverly Hills began as nothing more than lowly lima bean farm.
8. While many celebrities are buried in Los Angeles, nobody’s headstone is as famous as the lovable Mel Blanc. Mel is known for his years of voicework on the Looney Toons brand of cartoons. When he died, he commissioned his headstone to read: “That’s All Folks!”
Hopefully you have found these weird facts about Los Angeles as fun and exciting as we have.