60 Fun Facts About Los Angeles

In what year was the pueblo of Los Angeles founded under Spanish governor Felipe de Neve?

The founding party was 22 adults and 22 children from Sonora, and the city still marks September 4 as its birthday.

El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, the city's original name, means Our Lady the Queen of what?

The mouthful was shortened over the years, and the English 'City of Angels' nickname keeps the last word.

Los Angeles ranks where among US cities by population?

It passed the previous number two for the spot in early 1984, and only New York City is larger.

Which city did Los Angeles overtake in population in early 1984?

The same year the city hosted its second Summer Olympics, so it was a big year for civic bragging.

What are the indigenous people of the Los Angeles basin before Spanish settlement called?

Their territory covered roughly 4,000 square miles, and around 5,000 native people lived in the basin by the 1700s.

Which explorer claimed the Los Angeles region for Spain in 1542?

The Spanish took more than two centuries after that claim to actually found a settlement there.

The Los Angeles Aqueduct, completed in 1913, brings water to the city from which river?

The system runs on gravity alone and generates electricity along the way, and its diversion of the valley set off the California water wars.

Which engineer built the Los Angeles Aqueduct and later saw the St. Francis Dam collapse in 1928?

The dam failure killed at least 431 people, and the scenic drive along the ridge of the Santa Monica Mountains still carries his name.

In which year did Hollywood merge into the City of Los Angeles, largely to get water and sewer access?

Hollywood had been its own municipality for only seven years, and the first film studio, Nestor, arrived the year after the merger.

The Hollywood Sign was erected in 1923 to advertise what?

It originally read HOLLYWOODLAND, and the last four letters were not removed until 1949.

The Hollywood Sign stands on which peak in the Santa Monica Mountains?

In 1976 a prankster altered it to read HOLLYWEED after California relaxed its cannabis law.

Which magazine founder donated the final $900,000 in 2010 to save the land around the Hollywood Sign?

He had also helped fund the 1978 rebuild, when nine donors, including Alice Cooper, paid $27,778 apiece for a letter each.

Why has admission to Griffith Observatory been free since it opened in 1935?

Griffith J. Griffith had given the city 3,015 acres for the park in 1896, and more than 9 million people have since looked through the 12-inch Zeiss telescope.

A bust of which actor stands on the grounds of Griffith Observatory because of a 1955 film shot there?

Rebel Without a Cause used the observatory twice, and La La Land returned to it six decades later.

Which film premiered at the opening of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in May 1927?

The theatre's own account says Norma Talmadge started the forecourt handprint tradition by accidentally stepping into wet concrete.

Which company paid $5 million in 2013 for the naming rights to Grauman's Chinese Theatre?

Nearly 200 celebrity hand and footprints are set in the forecourt concrete outside.

Who is the only person honoured with a star in all five categories on the Hollywood Walk of Fame?

The Walk had grown to 2,850 stars by mid-2026, and Muhammad Ali's is the only one mounted on a wall so nobody walks on it.

The Packers beat which team in the first Super Bowl at the LA Coliseum in January 1967?

It drew 61,946 fans, and the Coliseum was picked to host the 2028 Games, which would make it the first stadium to stage three Summer Olympics.

A crowd of 115,300 at the Coliseum set a Guinness World Record for attendance at what kind of event?

The Dodgers played there from 1958 to 1961 while their stadium was being built, and the oval was never designed for the sport.

The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles from which city before the 1958 season?

The name came from sportswriters calling the team the Trolley Dodgers in 1895, and it stuck even though nobody in LA was dodging trolleys.

The Dodgers' ballpark, opened in 1962, was built on top of which historic Los Angeles neighbourhood?

It opened in April 1962, is the largest ballpark in the world by seats at 56,000, and is the third-oldest in MLB after Fenway and Wrigley.

Which Dodgers pitcher is the only player to win the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year in the same season?

His 1981 run sparked 'Fernandomania' and a championship season for the club.

The Lakers' name, odd in Los Angeles, was inspired by the nickname of which state?

Owner Bob Short moved the team west in 1960, and they later set the NBA record with 33 straight wins in 1971-72.

The Clippers relocated to Los Angeles in 1984 from which other California city?

They share the city with the Lakers, whose 17 championships trail only the Boston Celtics.

For how many seasons did the Raiders play in Los Angeles at the Coliseum before returning to Oakland?

They arrived in 1982 and left after 1994; the Rams then went to St. Louis, and LA had no NFL team at all until 2016.

The Rams won Super Bowl LVI in 2022 in their own building. What is it called?

NFL owners had voted 30-2 in January 2016 to let the team leave St. Louis and return to Los Angeles.

The mascot of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics was Sam, what kind of animal?

Fourteen Eastern Bloc countries boycotted, yet the Games still turned a profit of $232.5 million.

The Los Angeles River was encased in concrete after devastating floods in which decade?

The dry channel has since starred in Grease's drag race and Terminator 2, since it is an empty, deserted set right in the city.

The Los Angeles River flows about 51 miles from Canoga Park to its mouth in which city?

It empties into San Pedro Bay at the port there, having crossed the San Fernando Valley and downtown along the way.

The 1940 Arroyo Seco Parkway, the West's first freeway, linked Los Angeles to which city?

It was signed as the Pasadena Freeway from 1954 to 2010 and was then redesignated State Route 110, with a crash rate twice that of comparable highways.

What does the X in the airport code LAX stand for?

Two-letter codes were expanded to three in 1947 and LA simply got an extra letter; the airport had opened in 1928 as Mines Field.

LAX's flying-saucer Theme Building of 1961 exemplifies which architectural style?

The style takes its name from a West Hollywood coffee shop and defined Southern California's space-age diners and car washes.

The Bunker Hill funicular, the world's shortest incorporated railway, has cars named Sinai and what?

It first ran in 1901, and reopened for a single day in 2016 so La La Land could film on it.

Los Angeles City Hall's tower concrete was mixed with sand from every California county and water from what?

Finished in 1928, the 454-foot tower stayed the city's tallest building until 1966 and posed as the Daily Planet in the 1950s Superman series.

The 1893 Bradbury Building was J. F. Sebastian's apartment in which film?

It is one of only four office buildings in Los Angeles designated a National Historic Landmark.

Which lone Italian immigrant built the Watts Towers over 33 years?

He worked with hand tools and no plans, decorating the steel and concrete with bottles, tiles, seashells and mirrors.

The Getty Center, opened in 1997 in Brentwood, was designed by which architect?

The $1.3 billion campus used about 1.2 million square feet of travertine and is reached by a cable-pulled hovertrain from the car park.

Which famous Van Gogh painting hangs at the Getty Center?

The Getty is one of two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum; the other is the Villa in Pacific Palisades.

What had to be done in 2005 to some panels of Gehry's stainless-steel Walt Disney Concert Hall?

The reflective skin was bouncing so much glare and heat onto neighbouring apartments and the sidewalk that the offending panels were dulled; Lillian Disney's $50 million gift in 1987 had started the project.

The Hollywood Bowl, opened in 1922, is the summer home of which ensemble?

The Beatles played there in 1964 and 1965, and the recordings became a live album released in 1977.

Los Angeles restaurants Philippe the Original and Cole's both claim to have invented which sandwich?

Both opened in 1908; one story says a sandwich was accidentally dropped into a pan of meat drippings and the customer liked it anyway.

Roy Choi's Kogi truck, launched in Los Angeles in 2008, paired Korean barbecue with what?

It announced its location on Twitter, which led Newsweek to call it 'America's first viral eatery'.

In Iron Man 2, Tony Stark eats doughnuts inside the giant sign of which Inglewood shop?

The rolled-steel doughnut is about 32 feet across, and the shop has also appeared in Crocodile Dundee, Get Shorty and Futurama.

Developer Abbot Kinney founded which beach neighbourhood in 1905, digging canals to drain it?

It was billed as 'Venice of America', opened on the Fourth of July, and merged into Los Angeles in 1926.

The investors who incorporated Beverly Hills in 1914 had originally been drilling for what?

They found water instead, and the land had earlier been a lima bean farm; the city is entirely surrounded by Los Angeles and West Hollywood.

The Avila Adobe on Olvera Street, the oldest surviving residence in Los Angeles, was built in what year?

Christine Sterling's campaign to save it grew into the Mexican-style marketplace that opened on Easter Sunday 1930.

The 1992 Los Angeles riots began after a jury acquitted four police officers in the beating of which man?

Fifty-five people died over five days, and on May 1 he pleaded on television, 'can we all get along?'

The magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake struck the San Fernando Valley on January 17 of what year?

It happened on a previously unknown blind thrust fault and caused an estimated $13-50 billion in damage.

The only human remains found in the La Brea Tar Pits belong to a woman roughly how many years old?

She was 18 to 25 when she died; the pits' animal fossils date from the Last Glacial Period, and 'brea' is simply Spanish for tar.

The 1871 Los Angeles Chinese massacre killed 19, more than what share of the city's Chinese population?

The whole community numbered just 172 people, and fifteen of the victims were hanged by the mob.

Doheny's 1892 oil strike, which set off the LA oil boom, was near the present site of what?

By 1900 the city had passed 100,000 residents, and Doheny went on to become one of the richest men in America.

In 1840, Jean-Louis Vignes made the first recorded shipment out of Los Angeles of which product?

The Frenchman had bought 104 acres on arriving in 1831, decades before citrus made the region famous.

In 1908 Los Angeles became the first US city to adopt what kind of municipal ordinance?

The rule separated residential and industrial areas, and the city later elected Tom Bradley as its first African American mayor and Karen Bass as its first woman.

The city's first railroad, opened in October 1869, ran 21 miles between Los Angeles and which port town?

The transcontinental connection did not arrive until 1876, when the Southern Pacific bored the 6,940-foot Newhall tunnel with mostly Chinese labour.

In which year did Mexico's Congress declare Los Angeles a city and capital of Alta California?

American forces seized the town in 1846, and the Treaty of Cahuenga signed there in January 1847 ended the fighting in California.

The Santa Monica Pier's Looff Hippodrome houses what 1920s attraction on the National Register?

The pier itself opened in September 1909, and the Ferris wheel in Pacific Park is solar-powered.

How many settlers, known as Los Pobladores, founded the pueblo of Los Angeles on September 4, 1781?

Explorers Gaspar de Portolà and Juan Crespí had reached the site in August 1769.

The 1847 agreement that ended fighting for Los Angeles between Americans and Californios was signed where?

The wider Mexican Cession was formalised the next year at Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Who was elected Los Angeles's first African American mayor in 1973, serving five terms?

Karen Bass became the city's first female mayor in 2022.

The highest temperature officially recorded within Los Angeles city limits, 121 °F, was measured where in 2020?

The reading came from the Pierce College station in the San Fernando Valley on September 6, 2020.