What are some mind-blowing facts about Istanbul?

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Stacey Jones


A lot of these came from the trivia app, Trivia Tapper.

  • Istanbul has a vending machine that releases food and water for the city's stray dogs in exchange for recycled plastic bottles.
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  • Constantinople became Istanbul because people started referring to it as “The City” and the Greek phrase for “In The City” is pronounced “Is Tin Poli.”; Over time, this became Istanbul.
  • During the 9th century AD, two Vikings graffitied their names in the runes of Hagia Sophia. These carvings have survived since the Byzantium era, and are still viewable in modern-day Istanbul.
  • The cymbal manufacturer Zildjian was founded in Istanbul nearly 400 years ago
  • Every Saturday in Istanbul, a group of women gathers for a half-hour's public silence to protest Turkey's forced disappearances and political murders. Considered a 'model of civil disobedience', they are The Saturday Mothers.
  • During the 17th century in Turkey, drinking coffee was illegal and the punishment for doing so was death. The Sultan was so obsessed with enforcing this that he'd dress as a commoner, roam the streets of Istanbul with a sword, and chop off the heads of anyone he caught drinking it
  • Earthquakes have been moving so consistently along the North Anatolian Fault that Seismologists were able to predict the 1999 Izmit earthquake. The next earthquake it expected to hit near the city of Istanbul.
  • The beautiful Blue Mosque in Istanbul smells like feet because of the tourists who must remove their shoes, not the local worshipers who practice ablution that includes washing their feet before they pray
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  • In various neighborhoods throughout Istanbul, recycling boxes were installed that dispense dog food every time someone deposits a plastic bottle for recycling. Over 150,000 stray dogs are said to roam the streets of the city.
  • 60 years ago there was a series of riots organized by the Turkish authorities against Greeks living in Istanbul, similar to Kristallnacht.


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Merin Thomas

  • Following the model of Rome, Istanbul (ancient Byzantium or Constantinople) was founded on seven hills like Rome by Constantine the Great, each hill topped with imperial mosques.

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Silhouette of Istanbul skyline


  • Istanbul was the most crowded city of the world in 1502, then London took this title in 1840.
    Throughout most of its history, Istanbul has ranked among the largest cities in the world. By 500 AD, Constantinople had somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 people, edging out its predecessor, Rome, for world's largest city. While it never returned to being the world's largest, it remained Europe's largest city from not long after the Fall of Constantinople until the start of the 19th century, when it was surpassed by London. Istanbul is among the five most populous cities proper in the world.

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Photo: Today's Zama

  • Istanbul has the third oldest subway in the world, built in 1875. It is an underground funicular about 575m long with two stations, connecting the quarters of Karaköy and Beyoğlu. The Tünel is the second-oldest subterranean urban rail line in the world after the London Underground (1863), and the first subterranean urban rail line in continental Europe.


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Entrance of the top station, 1902

  • The Grand Bazaar is one of the largest and oldest covered markets in the world, with 61 covered streets and over 3,000 shops, which attract between 250,000 and 400,000 visitors daily.

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Store inside Istanbul's Grand Bazaar

  • The Hagia Sophia was the largest church in the world for about 900 years.
    It served as a church, later a mosque and then was secularised as a museum. Famous in particular for its massive dome, it is considered the epitome of Byzantine architecture and is said to have "changed the history of architecture." It remained the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years thereafter, until Seville Cathedral was completed in 1520.

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Hagia Sophia. F.H.Mira

  • During the Middle Ages in the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul had over 1.400 public toilets in the city meanwhile there weren't any even at the palaces in France and other European cities.

Sources:
15 Surprising Facts About Istanbul : Turkey Travel Centre
Istanbul

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Somnath Mishra


Honestly I don’t know a lot about Istanbul but I do know about the fact that Istanbul has some of the craziest football fans in the world.

This is how Galatasaray F.C. fans welcome their opponents, sure its enough to scare the sh*t out of the visiting fans and players!

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When Manchester United visited Galatasaray for an away fixture in the Champions League, Galatasaray fans made sure the red devils get a devilish treatment. A few of the crazy supporters even pelted stones at the Man United players. A lot of them went to the Airport to let United players know that they have really come to hell.

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This is how they cheer for their team: Yes, this is inside the stadium.

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Galatasaray and Besiktas are arch rivals and the derbies between them is usually a war, its played more off the pitch than on it, Oh wait this is on the pitch just that it’s not football.

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They make sure there’s enough fireworks on the field if in case you’re bored of football.

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Didier Drogba was once forced to flee the ground as Besiktas fans got angry and invaded the ground and if Didier Drogba flees a fight you should get an idea what happens there.



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Dakota Lim


Agatha Christie wrote her best selling detective novel, Murder on the Orient Express, in room 411 at the Pera Palas Hotel in Istanbul.

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This hotel, known as the Pearl of Istanbul, still exists today and room 411 is actively marketed to Christie’s fans and to fans of detective novels.

After her death, a real life mystery was uncovered about Christie in this room when the floorboards were torn up in a search for a key that a famous medium said Christie’s ghost told her would be there.

Agatha Christie’s Room 411

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Producers doing research in 1979 for a movie script on Christie’s mysterious two weeks disappearance from her home and reappearance in a Yorkshire hotel, hired a medium in Los Angeles, California, USA to get details about her life in Istanbul and in the Pera Palas Hotel.

The real life Agatha Christie mystery story unfolds in the book, Legendary Hotels of the World, the Pera Palas Hotel:


Pera Palas Hotel had a very special place in the life of best-selling author Agatha Christie. She stayed in the hotel many times between 1926 and 1932 and one of the best-known stories, ‘Orient Express’, was at least inspired if not written there.

Warner Brothers took the unusual course of contacting the famous Hollywood medium and clairvoyant, Tamara Rand to see is she could get in touch Christie’s spirit through a seance. Contact was made, it was claimed, with Christie’s spirit, which indicated that the key to the box containing her missing diary - the diary which would solve the mystery – was in room 411 at the Pera Palas Hotel In Istanbul, Turkey.

The news exploded like a bomb in the world press. The Turkish press and the foreign journalists went to the Pera Palas, room 411, on March 7, 1979. A telephone connection with Los Angeles was established and under the direction of Tamara Rand, the floor of the room was taken to pieces, everything being shown by satellite on American television. At the point where the wall joined the floor, right by the door, a rusty, eight centimetre-long key was found.
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Tamara Rand said that, after she went into a trance, she began to write in a language she did not know. The words she wrote were the name of a street in Istanbul and the name of a hotel on that street. Afterwords she then saw the hotel and Agatha Christie. Agatha was in room 411 and was hiding the key to her diary under the floorboards.

To summarize her comments, Rand claimed Agatha Christie let her know that the key was hidden in a hotel room in Istanbul. She even scribbled Agatha’s own hand writing during her trance. She had a vision of Agatha Christie walking along an ancient paved street and read the sign Mesrutiyet Caddesi, then she saw Christie getting into a building called Pera Palas going up into room 411. Once she closed the door, she hid a large key beneath the floorboards. In January 1986, a second key numbered 411 was found in the Pera Palas Hotel, this time in room 511, and the mystery, some say, took on a new dimension.

What happened to the key?

What happened to the diary?

No one knows. Agatha Christies still thrills us with mysteries long after her death.

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