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.
Davos switzerland. (WEF) (10k) Mariana brazil. (Known for a ecological disaster). (60k)
Not my country, but maybe Tipperary? It only has a population of 5k.
Blarney beats Tipperary in this scenario.
What’s Blarney?
A small town/suburb in Cork. Also the home of the Blarney Stone and the origin of the word ‘blarney’.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blarney_Stone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blarney https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/blarney
Not a bad reach for a town of around 2k population.
Mrs Doyle! Didn’t expect to see you off Craggy Island.
All I know about it is that it’s a long way there.
What do you consider small? A lot of people know Cupertino California because Apple are based there, but it’s only got a population of 57k. It’s arguably more recognizable than the closest major city (San Jose), which has a population close to 1 million.
Yeah, no Tim, nobody’s ever sung a song about getting to Cupertino
San Jose metro area is enormous though. For example I’d consider Gilroy (which is famous for its garlic) as being completely separate from San Jose even though it’s well within San Jose’s metro area.
Dildo, Newfoundland, Canada: 803 people as of 2021.
Someone here mentioned Vulcan, Alberta - however given the qualifiers of country and size, its 1769 people disqualifies it.
Also, though I am a Trekkie myself and know that Vulcan is well known in those circles, it’s virtually unheard of outside them.
Meanwhile, Dildo:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/odd-stories-of-2019-1.5389442
Dawson City is also a contender, at least domestically.
Definitely Altschauerberg, home of the country’s most prolific performance artist
The smallest Indian city that (almost) all Indians would know would be the hill resort of Shimla (pop 170,000). However, this is because a place is expected to have a population of about 100,000 to be declared a ‘city’, so for example New Delhi is only a town.
Mont Saint-Michel, pop. 25
Nice one, didn’t think of that ! I suggested the one-letter town Y (population : 89), which is obviously much less well-known, but is also much smaller.
Edit : just realised, the airport city Roissy-en-France at under 3k inhabitants is a huge contender too that wasn’t mentioned
Also consider that Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, of cheese fame, has 528 inhabitants.
Chamonix of also a good contender with a population of 9000 habitants
Even without considering cheese villages (somebody mentioned Roquefort, I was thinking of Gruyere, France clocking in at about 100 inhabitants), I believe Verdun would be just as known and is smaller at a population of around 17000.
Admittedly my WW2 history knowledge is quite lacking, but I don’t recognise Vichy because of the war stuff.
But I do recognise Vichy! Because we have a sub-type of mineral water in Sweden that is named after Vichy, “Vichyvatten”. Wikipedia tells me the original was from a spring near Vichy, hence the name.
Nokia, Finland, population 36,000. Cellphones, tyres, rubber boots, …
I actually used to own a cellphone and tyres from Nokia at the same time.
I’d try Bodom, population 0, if other than cities are allowed.
Or possibly Santa’s village, population 2 (if you exclude the elves)
Germany:
Bielefeld. Everyone recognizes the name, it’s marked on all maps, officially it has a football club.
But in reality, it doesn’t even exist.Darwin, Australia.
Famous for being bombed by the Japanese repeatedly during World War 2
I’d go with Port Arthur, Tasmania. 251 people from the 2016 census and the massacre is still burned into many people’s memories.
Probably Dildo, Newfoundland.
You know why.
Edit: Actually, I think Dawson City is smaller. It’s famous for being a big city back during the gold rush, despite being up near the arctic circle.
Schengen - the village in Luxembourg where the Schengen Agreement was signed. The population was 5196 in 2023 (appears to be the last census quoted on Wikipedia) and the “Schengen Area”, covered by the agreement represents 450m people.
I didn’t even know there were multiple villages in Luxembourg. I kinda thought it was a city-state.
I thought so too before moving here, but there’s two cities, and a lot of empty space (in the north in particular) with lots of towns and villages, it’s not like Monaco or the Vatican City in that regard.
That being said, it’s still all very close together, you can drive from the northern most point to the south in about 1.5-2 hours.
The funniest thing I’ve learned about the geography is that there is a North/South divide where people from either don’t trust people from the other.
That is funny!
That’s a great one!
Lajitas, Texas, which once elected as their mayor a goat that drank beer, has a population of 75.
Terlingua, Texas, as made famous by Jerry Jeff Walker and home of the Terlingua International Chili Cook-off, has a population of 78.
Luckenbach, Texas, as made famous by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, has a population of 3.
