Little Known Facts about Brooklyn

Brooklyn is full of wonderful little-known historical tidbits. I’ll share a few with you here.

If you’re a Brooklynite you’ve probably heard that the city’s largest borough was once a city all on its own until it merged with New York City --- in what was recalled later as “the great mistake of 1898.”

And then there’s the fact that on very cold days the Brooklyn Bridge rises approximately three inches. Why? Because the cables contract and expand.

Some well-known products were invented in Brooklyn. These include the deep-fried Twinkie, Sweet N Low, teddy bears, the first bank credit card and we can’t forget Nathan’s famous hot dogs.

Brooklyn is on Long Island but is not considered part of Long Island. The Brooklyn History Museum was called the Long Island Historical Society as recent as the 1980s.

It is also home to more than 700 arts and cultural institutions. Among them the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Transit Museum, The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, The Brooklyn Historical Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum. There are really so many wonderful places to visit that many people never leave Brooklyn at all.

On 2006, a cold war bomb shelter was uncovered on the Brooklyn Bridge during a routine structural inspection of the city. Inside the bunker were more than 350,000 crackers (just what you need to munch on if it’s sort of the end of the world) – some of these were still edible. Also found were some medical supplies, paper blankets and water drums.

And for a couple of years a guy named Barack Obama lived a half block from Prospect Park on the top floor of a brown stone on Second Street with his former girlfriend.