Facts about Philadelphia

Philadelphia also has the fourth largest population of Polish residents.

According to the 2016 United States Census Bureau estimate, there were 1,567,872 people residing in Philadelphia, representing a 2.7 percent increase from the 2010 census.

The large Philadelphia sections, North, Northeast, Northwest, West, South, and Southwest Philadelphia surround Center City, which falls within the original city limits prior to consolidation in 1854.

The first experimental radio license was issued in Philadelphia in August 1912 to St. Joseph's College.

In 2006, there were 4,479.3 crimes per 100,000 people in Philadelphia.

Like many American cities, Philadelphia saw a gradual yet pronounced rise in crime in the years following World War II.

Numerous smaller neighborhoods within the areas coincide with the boroughs, townships, and other communities that made up Philadelphia County before their absorption by the city.

Philadelphia was renamed Amman during control of the Ghassanians, a group of South Arabian Christian tribes who migrated from Yemen around 250 C.E.

During the 1930s, the experimental station W3XE, which was owned by Philco Corp, became the first television station in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia, once home to more than 4,000 trolleys on 65 lines, is one of the few North American cities to maintain streetcar lines.

Bodies of water in and around Philadelphia include the Delaware River and Schuylkill River, and the Cobbs, Wissahickon, and Pennypack Creeks.

Two airports serve Philadelphia: the Philadelphia International Airport (PHL), straddling the southern boundary of the city, and the Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), a general aviation reliever airport in Northeast Philadelphia.

Philadelphia has the second largest Irish, Italian, and Jamaican populations and the fourth largest African American population in the nation.

Philadelphia has had a prominent role in music.

Mexicans make up the largest ethnic group of Latinos at 31.9 percent of Los Angeles' population, followed by Salvadorans (6.0 percent) and Guatemalans (3.6 percent).

The state government left Philadelphia in 1799 and the federal government left soon after, in 1800.

New York City soon surpassed Philadelphia in population, but construction of roads, canals, and railroads helped turn Philadelphia into the United States' first major industrial city.

Philadelphia is a major hub for Greyhound Lines, which operates 24-hour service to points east of the Mississippi River.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Philadelphia area had a total gross domestic product of $431 billion in 2016, the eighth-largest metropolitan economy in the United States.

Today, SEPTA operates five "subway-surface" trolleys that run on street-level tracks in West Philadelphia and subway tunnels in Center City.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of the largest art museums in the United States.

The Philadelphia area was the location of the Lenape (Delaware) Indian village Shackamaxon.

The program, which has funded more than 200 pieces of public art, is administered by the Philadelphia Office of Arts and Culture, the city's art agency.

Philadelphia has many neighborhoods, each with its own identity.

Immigrants, mostly German and Irish, settled in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts.

After many of the old manufacturers and businesses had left Philadelphia or shut down, the city started attracting service businesses and to aggressively market itself as a tourist destination.

Philadelphia is an important center for medicine, a distinction that it has held since the colonial period.

Education in Philadelphia is provided by many private and public institutions.

From the Civil War until the mid-twentieth century, Philadelphia was a bastion of the Republican Party, which arose from the staunch pro-Northern views of Philadelphia residents during and after the war.

Penn's plan was that Philadelphia would be like an English rural town instead of a city.

A significant contributor to Philadelphia at the time was Benjamin Franklin, who helped improve city services and founded new ones, such as the American colonies' first hospital.

Philadelphia's major science museums include the Franklin Institute, the Academy of Natural Sciences, and the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Philadelphia is home to the United States' first zoo and hospital.

The Philadelphia region also has the fourth largest population of Indian Americans.

Philadelphia is also known for the Philadelphia Big 5, a group of five Division I college basketball programs: Saint Joseph's University, University of Pennsylvania, La Salle University, Temple University, and Villanova University.

The federal government has several facilities in Philadelphia as well.

Philadelphia's economy is relatively diversified, with meaningful portions of its total output derived from manufacturing, oil refining, food processing, health care and biotechnology, tourism and financial services.

Philadelphia is Pennsylvania's largest city and is home to a major seaport and shipyards on the Delaware River.

Philadelphia lies at the northern periphery of the temperate climate zone.

In 2015, according to annual homicide statistics and crime maps provided on the Philadelphia Police Department's website, there were 280 murders in the city.

In 2007, the population of the city proper was estimated to be nearly 1.5 million, while the Greater Philadelphia metropolitan area was the fifth-largest in the United States.

The first reform came in 1917, when outrage over the murder of a police officer during that year's election led to the shrinking of the Philadelphia City Council.

Philadelphia contains many national historical sites that relate to the founding of the United States.

The East Coast operations of the United States Mint are based near the historic district, and the Federal Reserve Bank's Philadelphia division is based there as well.

In 2008, Philadelphia was ranked as the 22nd most dangerous American city.

Before Penn left Philadelphia for the last time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing Philadelphia as a city.

The rise in population of the surrounding districts helped lead to the Act of Consolidation of 1854 which extended the city of Philadelphia to include all of Philadelphia County.

Out of the ten most populous cities in the United States in 2006, Philadelphia had the highest homicide rate at 28 per 100,000 people.

Philadelphia is located on the fall line separating the Atlantic Coastal Plain from the Piedmont.

A number of battles during the war were fought in Philadelphia and its environs.

Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for brotherly love (philos, "love" or "friendship," and adelphos, "brother").

Indians and Arabs have come to Northeast Philadelphia, joining Russian and Ukrainian immigrants.

The sixth NCAA Division I school in Philadelphia is Drexel University.

The city's founder William Penn named it Philadelphia, which is Greek for brotherly love.

Philadelphia's architectural history dates back to Colonial times and includes a wide range of styles.

Philadelphia has more public art than any other American city.

Concentrations of Cambodian-American neighborhoods can be found in North and South Philadelphia.

Throughout the nineteenth century, Philadelphia was home to a variety of industries and businesses, the largest being textiles.

Philadelphia also has three distinguished children's hospitals: Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, (the nation's first pediatric hospital located adjacent to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania), St. Christopher's Hospital, and the Shriners' Hospital.

The city is also home to the nation's first school of pharmacy, the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, now called the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia.

From the Civil War until the mid-twentieth century, Philadelphia was a bastion of the Republican Party, which arose from the staunch pro-Northern views of Philadelphia residents during and after the war.

During the eighteenth century, Philadelphia eclipsed New York City in political and social importance.

The same departmental site documents that the number of homicides fell slightly the following year, with 277 murders in Philadelphia in 2016, rising to 317 in 2017.

The Philadelphia School District is the eighth largest school district in the United States with 210,432 students in 346 public and charter schools.

Philadelphia's two major newspapers are the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, both of which are owned by Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC.

To this day, a popular nickname for Philadelphia is the City of Brotherly Love, though it is often informally referred to as Philly.

The School District of Philadelphia runs the city's public schools.

The legislative branch, the Philadelphia City Council, consists of ten council members representing individual districts and seven members elected at large.

The Asian population was once concentrated in the city's thriving Chinatown, but now Korean Americans have come to Olney, and Vietnamese have forged bazaars next to the Italian Market in South Philadelphia.

Philadelphia's 30th Street Station is a major railroad station on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, which offers access to Amtrak, SEPTA, and New Jersey Transit lines.