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.
I’m in the US and I can’t say I’d heard of Oregon City before this post…
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 think people really overestimate how much everybody knows about the US.
I’d say there’s a large population that only know NYC, LA, and Chicago.
Van Halen and Spring Break dictates that everyone knows Panama city.
Population of under 36,000.
“Panama isn’t about a city, it’s the stage name of a stripper from Albuquerque!”
- David Lee Roth
It doesn’t matter that it isn’t actually about the city. That doesn’t change that people think of and know Panama the city due to the song. They either know it because they think it’s about the city, or they know it because they’re like you with their “actually”, which shows that you and anyone else who knows it’s about a stripper still knows of the city.
Gibraltar has a population of 32,000, which by some definitions is too small to be considered a city.
Gibraltar is a city?
I am American, so low bar, but there are dozens of us.
It’s a city, it’s a really big rock, it’s a maritime port, it’s the only wild monkey population in Europe, it’s a 2½ mi2 British Overseas Territory whose status is perennially contested by Spain.
