Things you didn't know about... Manchester

Rolls met Royce in Manchester
In the Midland Hotel, to be precise. The Rolls-Royce company was founded in Manchester, too, in 1906, though after just two years it moved to Derby.

The University of Manchester has had some big successes...
... including 22 Nobel Prize winners, Ernest Rutherford's research which led to the splitting of the atom, and a computer called Baby, which started the computer revolution in 1948.

The man who discovered colour blindness was from Manchester
His name was John Dalton and he lived in Manchester nearly all his life. Colour blind himself, he also wrote about meteorology and English grammar.

The Roman name for Manchester was "Mamucium"...
... which is often translated as "place on the breast-shaped hill".

Dead fly pie, a Manchester delicacy
This is the nickname sometimes given to the Eccles Cake, a traditional Manchester confection made from pastry and currants and all kinds of other yummy ingredients. It was sold for the first time in 1793 in Eccles (part of Salford in the Greater Manchester conurbation).

Coronation Street might never have been
Everyone knows that the soap is set in or near Manchester, but did you know that the working title for the series was Florizel Street? This was until a tea lady at the studios said it sounded like a disinfectant, and the name got changed. (In fact, Florizel is a character from Shakespeare's The Winter'sTale.)

Engels was sent to live in Manchester
The father of the co-author of the Communist Manifesto sent him to work in Manchester to cure him of his left-wing leanings. But it was based on what he saw in Manchester that he wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England.

The best actor who never won an Oscar is from Manchester
Well, Salford. Albert Finney has been nominated four times as Best Actor and once as Best Supporting Actor but has never won.

Manchester is a rock haven
Manchester has a fair claim to being the popular music capital of Britain. It's been home to a large number of top bands, including The Hollies, Joy Division, Simply Red, The Smiths and Oasis.

The B of the Bang sculpture in Manchester...
... is taller than the Angel of the North and leans more than the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It consists of 180 spikes shooting out from a single point. The sculpture, now placed outside the City of Manchester stadium, was inspired by sprinter Linford Christie's remark that he started his races "on the B of the Bang!" of the starting pistol.