5 Fun Facts About San Francisco!

It actually isn't (Vermont Avenue is crookeder) but that doesn't it stop it from being a well known attraction! Lombard street is best known for a part that has eight sharp turns (also known as switchbacks) on a fairly steep one block section! The design was created because the hill was too steep for many cars and pedestrians. Lombard street has been featured in various films and video games.

When the gold rush started, San Francisco was just a small settlement of a couple hundred people. Within about ten years, San Francisco grew into a city of thousands of people and for a time was the largest city on the West Coast. San Francisco's NFL team The 49ers was named for the California Gold Rush.

Some of the names that San Francisco has been called include "The City That Knows How", "Baghdad By The Bay", "Fog City", "The Paris of The West," and "Yerba Buena" which means "good grass' in Spanish.

The first cookie was created in 1914 by Makoto Hagiwara who also created the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park. Now there are around 3 billion fortune cookies made annually!

This is before Alcatraz became a prison and was home to famous prisoners such as Al Capone.