50 Fun Facts About Subway

What was the profession of the man who lent 17-year-old Fred DeLuca $1,000 to open the first Subway in 1965?

Peter Buck suggested the shop as a way for DeLuca to pay for college; the two remained partners for the rest of their lives.

What was the Subway chain's original name when its first shop opened in 1965?

Radio ads made 'Pete's Submarines' sound like 'pizza marines', and the shop was renamed Subway in 1968.

How much did Fred DeLuca borrow to open the first Subway?

He was 17 and hoping to fund medical school; the chain he built was sold to Roark Capital for $9.6 billion in 2023.

Roughly how many Subway locations were there worldwide as of September 2023?

Across more than 102 countries and territories, making it the largest single-brand restaurant chain in the world by outlets.

In 2008 Subway launched a famous promotion selling every regular one-foot sandwich for how much?

The $5 footlong jingle became one of the decade's most recognisable ads; franchisees later rebelled as costs rose.

What two-word slogan did Subway use to stress its freshly baked bread?

The company's ovens in every store were the point; in 2020 Ireland's Supreme Court ruled the bread too sugary to count as bread for tax purposes.

Which country's Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that Subway's bread was too sugary to be legally bread?

For VAT purposes it had to be classed as confectionery, or cake; the ruling made headlines worldwide.

Jared Fogle became Subway's US spokesman in 2000 after losing how much weight on its sandwiches?

He lost it between 1998 and 1999; Subway severed ties in 2015 when he faced federal charges.

Where was Subway's headquarters located in 2023, when Roark Capital bought the chain?

Subway moved from Milford to Shelton, Connecticut in 2023 and announced a relocation to Miami in 2024; Roark Capital, its owner since 2023, is based in Atlanta.

What job title does Subway give the staff who assemble your order?

The trademarked title has been a running joke since the 1990s; the company's careers page still uses it.

Which private-equity firm agreed to buy Subway in August 2023 for about $9.6 billion?

Roark already owned Arby's, Dunkin' and Jimmy John's; the DeLuca and Buck families had run Subway privately for 58 years.

Which regional name for the submarine sandwich originated in the Philadelphia area?

Hero is New York's word, first recorded in 1937; grinder belongs to New England and po' boy to Louisiana.

The world's first underground passenger line opened in London on 10 January 1863. Which company ran it?

Steam locomotives hauled gas-lit carriages between Paddington and Farringdon; the City and South London of 1890 was the first deep-level electric tube.

Despite the name, roughly what share of the London Underground is actually below ground?

Much of the network in outer London runs on the surface; the 'Tube' nickname refers to the round deep-level tunnels.

The New York City Subway has more stations than any other system in the world. How many?

Or 423 if you merge stations linked by transfers; the system opened on 27 October 1904 and runs 24 hours a day.

In which year did the New York City Subway open?

27 October 1904; it now runs 248 route miles and carried some 2.3 billion riders in 2025, the busiest system in the Western Hemisphere.

The Beach Pneumatic Transit, New York's secret 1870 subway demo, moved its single car how?

Alfred Ely Beach's giant fan blew the car about 300 feet under Broadway from the basement of a clothing store; it closed in 1873.

The Paris Métro's first line opened on 19 July 1900 to coincide with what event?

Hector Guimard's Art Nouveau entrances went up at the same time; 86 of them survive across the 321-station network.

Which architect designed the Art Nouveau entrances of the Paris Métro?

Eighty-six of his wrought-iron and glass entrances still stand; a few have ended up in museums as far away as New York and Chicago.

The Moscow Metro, famed for its chandelier-lit stations, opened in which year?

It began with one 11-km line and 13 stations and is now the busiest metro in Europe, with 304 stations by 2026.

Which city's subway is the world's longest metro network by route length, at over 900 km?

Shanghai, at just over 800 km, is second by length but first in annual ridership and station count, with 415 stations.

Which metro system carries the most passengers per year, around 3.8 billion?

It only opened in 1993; Shanghai also has the most stations of any system, 415, though New York's 472 count is the traditional figure for individual stops.

Budapest's Line 1, opened in 1896 for Hungary's millennium celebrations, holds which distinction?

Emperor Franz Joseph inaugurated it; only the City and South London Railway of 1890 is older among electric undergrounds, and UNESCO listed it in 2002.

The Glasgow Subway, opened in December 1896 and never extended, consists of what?

It is the world's third-oldest underground metro after London and Budapest; the press nickname 'Clockwork Orange' is rarely used by locals.

The oldest subway tunnel in North America opened on 1 September 1897 in which city?

The Tremont Street subway carried streetcars under downtown Boston and was made a National Historic Landmark in 1964.

Which Underground employee designed the schematic London Tube map in 1931?

Management was sceptical of the unpaid side project, tried it in a 1933 pamphlet and paid him ten guineas for the card edition.

How much was the Tube map's designer paid for the artwork of its first card edition?

Roughly £650 in 2020s money, plus five guineas for the poster; the map became the template for transit diagrams worldwide.

The London Underground's 'Mind the gap' warning was coined around 1968 because of what problem?

Sound engineer Peter Lodge's own test reading ended up as the recording; a restored Oswald Laurence version returned to Embankment in 2013.

In baseball, a 'Subway Series' is a matchup between teams from which city?

Yankees against Mets today, historically Yankees against Giants or Dodgers; the 2000 World Series was the first Subway World Series since 1956, and the Yankees won it 4-1.

Which two teams met in the 2000 World Series, the first Subway World Series since 1956?

The Yankees won four games to one for their third straight title; the Dodgers and Giants had left for California in 1958.

In which city is Arsenalna, one of the world's deepest metro stations at 105.5 metres down?

Opened in 1960 on the first stretch of the Kyiv Metro, it was the world's deepest until a Chongqing station overtook it in 2023.

The Buenos Aires Subte opened in 1913 as the first underground railway in which part of the world?

It was also the first in the Spanish-speaking world, beating the Madrid Metro by nearly six years.

The first metro system in Africa and the Middle East opened in 1987 in which city?

Line 1's first 29-km segment reused suburban rail lines; Algiers and Lagos followed decades later.

How many of the Stockholm Metro's 100 stations feature artworks, earning it the title 'world's longest art gallery'?

More than 150 artists have contributed sculptures, mosaics and painted cave-like rock since the first line opened in 1950, the first metro in the Nordic countries.

The Montreal Metro, opened in 1966, is unusual among North American systems for running on what?

The French influence shows in the rolling stock and station design; the system is entirely underground, which the tyres' vulnerability to snow made necessary.

In Japan, the staff who push passengers into crowded rush-hour trains are called what?

From osu, 'to push', and -ya, a line of work; when first introduced at Shinjuku they were politely titled 'passenger arrangement staff'.

In which year was Massimo Vignelli's diagrammatic New York subway map unveiled?

Riders hated its beige parks and square Central Park; the more geographic Tauranac/Hertz map replaced it in 1979 for the subway's 75th anniversary.

How many lines does the London Underground have?

Across 250 miles of track and 272 stations; the Elizabeth line and Overground are run separately and not counted.

The Washington Metro, with its cavernous vaulted concrete stations, opened in which year?

It has since grown to six lines and 98 stations over 130 route miles.

The Chicago 'L' began operation in which year?

Its elevated tracks looping the downtown gave the business district its name, the Loop.

What do the initials stand for in Subway's best-selling B.M.T. sandwich?

The name was a nod to the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit company, tying the pepperoni, salami and ham sub back to the chain's name.

Why is Subway's US franchisor called Doctor's Associates Inc.?

The company was formed in 1966 to oversee the growing chain. Co-founder Peter Buck was a nuclear physicist, not a medical doctor.

The first Subway outside North America opened in December 1984 in which country?

The UK had to wait until 1996, when a shop opened in Brighton; the first Canadian Subway came in St. John's in 1986.

At the end of which year did Subway overtake McDonald's as the world's largest fast food chain?

It finished that year with 33,749 restaurants, 1,012 more than McDonald's. By 2016 it was closing hundreds of US stores for the first time.

Early radio ads for 'Pete's Submarines' were changed because the name sounded like what?

The fix was 'Pete's Subway', which by 1968 had been trimmed to just Subway. Founder Fred DeLuca was 17 when he opened the first shop.

Which Tokyo route, opened in 1927 between Ueno and Asakusa, was Japan's first underground railway?

The original stretch was only 2.2 km long and was advertised as 'the first underground railway in the Orient'.

Seoul's Line 1, the first in the Seoul Metropolitan Subway, began operating in which year?

Construction started in 1971, and from day one trains ran through onto Korail's suburban lines. Lines 1 to 9 alone now total over 330 km of track.

The London Underground's nickname 'the Tube' comes from what feature of its later lines?

The first lines were cut-and-cover trenches just below street level; the later bored lines run in tubes about 11 ft 8 in across, one per direction.

Of the New York City Subway's 472 stations, how many are served 24 hours a day?

Only five stations, all in the Bronx, lack a booth staffed around the clock. Many entrance staircases are painted a shared shade of green.

Which New York name for the sub, first attested in 1937, is often miscredited to a food writer?

Clementine Paddleford of the Herald Tribune usually gets the credit without evidence. The gyro link is also unlikely, since gyros reached the US only in the 1960s.