In the United States, I’d probably name Oregon City, the famous end of the Oregon Trail and the first city founded west of the Rocky Mountains during the pioneer era. Its population is only 37,000.
Unfortunately, I would guess that school shooter locations are probably the most easily recognised in the US. Uvalde has a population of ~15,000, for instance.
OP said famous, not infamous.
💀
Ah yeah, I was going for instantly recognizable
Similar to how more people have heard of Lockerbie than any other Scottish town of 5000 people.
Sandy Hook is ~9,000. You may not remember, but Alex Jones does.
Yeah Alex Jones can rot in hell
Not my country, but what immediately came to mind was one that has global name recognition, and minimal population: Chernobyl.
It used to have around 12,000 population, but now it’s technically illegal to live nearby, and up to 150 people are estimated to live there today. It’s famous for being toxically irradiated as a result of the worst nuclear disaster in human history
I’m in the US and I can’t say I’d heard of Oregon City before this post…
I thought the Oregon Trail was a pretty standard part of US history curriculum.
From US, played Oregon trail for hundreds of hours, didn’t remember Oregon City.
Nantucket Massachusetts 10k
Aspen Colorado 7k
Jackson Hole Wyoming 10k
Key West Florida 25k
Probably all more famous and smaller population.
Tombstone, AZ has a population of 1,313.
And every one of them is hot.
Hannibal, MO - 16,838 - back when people read books they’d know this as the birthplace of Samuel Clemens AKA Mark Twain
I think the game ended in The Dalles didn’t it?
But most of the world did not have the US education system. I’d say only some Americans have heard of Oregon City, and very few non Americans.
We were taught about it, but most Americans don’t view westward expansion with the same… Reverence? Notoriety?
Like, I remember learning about it across multiple grades, but… Oregon City being the final destination, that’s not something I would probably remember a year or two later, nevermind a decade or more.
It was popular, but I think most folks who played it remember dying of dysentery, not the cities 😆
It is. But that’s not saying much.
I may have had to keep a few of the waypoints of the trail in my head for, oh, a week or so, just long enough to scribble it on a history test. Then that information was immediately cleared out to make way for whatever other junk we had to temporarily memorize next chapter.
Only a vague, blurry notion that the Oregon Trail A) existed and B) was a trail to (presumably) somewhere in Oregon remains with me today. Oregon City is certainly not a part of that notion.
Not to shit on the Oregon Trail or Oregon City in particular, of course. I would be truly baffled to meet anyone that retained, in significant detail, even a tenth of what any grade school history class purportedly taught them.
Not really, not in our school district anyways. They did allow us to play the game based on that on their ancient computers, but never really gave us historical context, nor were we required to play the game.
I didn’t learn shit about it back then, and barely get it today. I’m 42 years old for reference.
Oregon trail, yes, Oregon city, no. I remember learning that it went from independence Missouri to the Willamette Valley. If I had to guess where I thought it ended, I would have said Portland.
I too have never heard of Oregon City. I can only assume it’s in Oregon. The only thing I remember about the Oregon Trail is that I died from dysentery every time I followed the trail.
I am not in the US. Never heard of Oregon City. But Atlantic City sounds really familiar.
Fairly big city and a tourist destination if you are too trash to go to Reno, which is where you go if you are too trash to go to Vegas.
Ocean City is the new Atlantic City anyway.
Oregon City would be my answer to ‘what’s the capital of Oregon?’
Just a standard, since I never heard of the capital I’ll try the state name plus city guess.
I take it it’s not Portland?
I just looked it up. Salem is the capital. Portland is the largest city.
For real. I’d think many more people could name Panama city in Florida. Famous spring break and vacation city every kid who’s gone through college or listened to Van Halen knows of. Also has a population of less than 36,000 people.
I don’t know about the smallest, but I’ve always thought that Santa Fe, New Mexico has an outsized influence on everything from food to art to architecture and culture. I visited last year and it was much smaller than I envisioned, partly because there are local regulations on building height to keep from ruining the charm of the city.
For NM I’d say Roswell; 5th largest city (48k population) but well known b/c aliens
deleted by creator
In the UK it’s got to be the City of London. Famous for being an ancient city established by the Romans and awash with history, now one of the world’s biggest financial centers with a modern skyline of famously distinctive skyscrapers. It’s home to some world-famous landmarks like Saint Paul’s Cathedral and Tower Bridge, and has a population of about 10,000.
The City of London is not to be confused with London, London, London or London.
For foreigners, probably Abbottabad (population: 275,890) due to being the site of Osama Bin Laden’s compound.
For Pakistanis themselves, it’s a bit harder to determine, as I’m not able to find reliable population statistics for smaller settlements. However, some contenders are probably Nathia Gali, Chitral, Skardu and Ziarat. All of these towns are in the northern mountainous regions of Pakistan, which don’t have as much population density as e.g. the plains of Punjab. They’re also fairly popular tourist destinations for Pakistanis who want to take a break from the heat. Ziarat could be especially famous, as Muhammad Ali Jinnah (founder of Pakistan) spent some of his last days in a cottage there. It even appears on the 100-rupee note.
ottawa
I think a decent number of people know about Dildo, NL
Or, like, Saskatoon. Ottawa is smaller than Toronto but it’s still big.
Byron bay. Bundaberg. Coon.
Snowtown, Port Arthur
Davos switzerland. (WEF) (10k) Mariana brazil. (Known for a ecological disaster). (60k)
For Mexico, maybe Tecate, which is a city in the state of Baja California, and its know for a beer of the same name. Cant really think of anything that is smaller and more famous.
I legitimately though Oregon was a State, I didn’t know it was also a city.
From my country I’m going to be generous and say Barcelona. Second biggest city here. I doubt next bigger cities are universally known.
Granada is pretty famous for tourist reasons, but unfortunately will be confused with Grenada, so it probably doesn’t count. Ibiza, maybe?
I think Seville and Pamplona are well known, for the Barber of Seville and the running of the bulls respectively.
Dildo, Newfoundland.
Not really though.
Off the top of my head I’d say places like Gander, Churchill, Iqaluit - places known maybe for their location as much as their people and unique situations?
Edit: another comment (Aspen) made me want to mention Banff but Alberta isn’t acting Canadian anymore so it no longer counts.
Nope
Banff is what I was looking for in this list (pop ~8300). Not many places in this country are ‘acting Canadian’ anymore.
Omg…i spent 4 hours in Gander one evening, so it took about 20 hours to go Dallas -> Chicago -> Gander-> Chicago.
Edit: I got it - my bet is Charlottetown, PEI, because those Anne of Green Gables books were wildly popular on the international market, and I imagine fans tried to find Avonlea on a map and learned that Charlottetown exists.
I’m probably still wrong, this is actually kind of a tough question.
Edit 2: Nah I change my mind, maybe Gimli, MB because the Gimli Glider incident did garner quite a bit of attention.
Charlottetown is a good answer actually. Bigger than I thought though, 40k people.
The smallest Canadian city that I’d think most people around the world might know about is Niagara Falls, although they might only know about the falls and not know that it’s also a city.
Edit: I thought the question meant people around the world but I guess it could also mean just the people in your own country…
Yellowknife has a population of 20,000. Is that considered small enough?
I’d say no in the context of the OP. That’s one of our major cities in our own way. And a territorial capital.
Wales has St. Davids - population c.1,750
Aramoana here in New Zealand. It has a population in the low hundreds and it is famous for a horrible massacre in 1990. The cops here don’t usually have guns and in a little place like that there are often only a handful of police that are anywhere in the general region.
