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Where you live, do you live near something or someplace special and unique that only exists where you are?

Of course you do!

What I am talking about are things that have some fame or notoriety. Something that could be googled and found without digging through local municipality archives or dusty newspaper tomes. Things and places that exist that have some type of special attachment and history.

So list those things that you are near and make others jealous of your status as "that guy who lives five minutes down the road from the world's largest jelly doughnut."

Here is what is near me:

Calverton National Cemetery- U.S.'s largest national cemetary dedicated to those who died in the service of America's military.

WarStore.net- where many of you get your gaming supplies online.

Brookhaven National Laboratory- debated "birthplace" of the first ever video game- a variant of the game later dubbed as "Pong." Has done other less noteworthy things afterwards, such as have scientists who worked there win Nobel Prizes and such.

Plum Island Animal Disease Center- only place in the United States where live foot and mouth disease is studied, among other dangerous Biosaftey 3 diseases.

Calverton Executive Airpark- A Grumman site where major components of the Apollo lunar modules were constructed and tested before being launched into space.

Well...that is about all I can think of at this time.

Mount Coolum, not to far from where I live, was used for range-finding and target practice by offshore Australian and foreign Navies. There's a crater from a live shell roughly 1.7 km away from the actual mountain. Doesn't say much for thier aim.

Texas School Book depository. Grassy knoll. That whole area where JFK was assassinated. Last time I was there they had a rectangle painted in the road where his car was when he was hit.

The Reaper factory of Reaper minis is about 30 min away. Doubles as a FLGS, very laid back store they'll let you play anything even though Reaper minis owns it.

JFK assasinated. (Grim?) Reaper nearby?

My apologies for this horrible off topic post but I can't resist. Avantgarde when I first read over your post it processed in my mind as Texas School Book suppository. I just thought I'd share that little bit of silly with you guys. Carry on with the conversation. :3

The Chicago water tower.

The (formerly) Sears Tower.

Wrigley Field.

2122 North Clark Street (St. Valentines Day Massacre).

Fermilab, not really historical, but cool nonetheless.

I've been to fermilab before. My that place is extravagant. (The HUGE pendulum for instance)...

Unfortunately I am no longer near there. We have a train museum a couple towns over, and a Krogers grocery store where Ben Roethlisberger allegedly shops from time to time when he's in town visiting his mom. Never seen it with my own eyes though.

And then there was NYC... Where to begin on historical stuff in a place like that? Lived in a apartment that was built on the foundation of a revolutionary war fort. It had stables they turned into storage units, it had towers that became the apartment units, a courtyard, a well, and it was way up on a hill overlooking the river. (North Bronx). You could still see 200+ year old cannonball marks on the walls.

The coolest one was Lake Geneva Wisconsin though where I got to game with Gary Gygax and Tom Wham (DnD inventors) once visiting the FLGS. Fun guys, fun afternoon, completely random pickup game. The birthplace of DnD is a pretty historical location if you are a geek like me growing up with it.

I think the Europeans will win this when the timezone shifts. As a preview, I live in London so have more things that I could possibly list, from the centre of all timezones, tower of london and oxford street to numerous palaces, bridges, cemeteries, cathedrals, churches, medieval streets, places of scientific interest, museums, historical artifacts, etc. I could easily name many, many things from each of those categories that are world renowned, let alone being visible from the first page of google.

Sorry for the boring, out of spirit post! I guess if I had to pick just one thing, I'd choose piccadilly circus - heart of the west end of london and home to millions of tourists each year. Just walking through there you see so many people who are happy to be on holiday that it always lifts your spirits regardless of how tired or miserable you are feeling before you get there.

The center of timezones is in some little town on the coast I visited once. It has a 'maritime museum'. Greenwich or grennich or however its spelled.

It had a really cool boat exhibit that was all about the times when England ruled the waves. Umm... 200 years ago or so.

I can say that picadilly circus is quite a spot and full of all sorts of stuff. Elephant n Castle! I'd go there for a pint any time. Its named after 'Le'enfante de castille'... some random arranged marriage to some spanish chick that the locals decided to have fun with the phonetics.

My house is quite close to where a bushranger named Moondyne Joe used to hideout.

Well here in Portland Oregon there is lots of historic stuff across the river in Washington is Fort Vancouver there are tunnels under downtown that were used to shanghai people during those times it is the original home of the Henry Weinhearts sp brewery. there are loads more.

Well...
I can go to Winston Salem pretty easy, and that's a cool historical location.

I can go to the USS North Carolina as a day trip, and that's just amazing.

Or I can go about 10 minutes and be at Epic Games' offices.

Where their lobby has a freakin' slide built into the staircase.

I live a stone throw away from the world's very first "cloverleaf" interchange

Dayton, Ohio is where the Wright Brothers invented the airplane, the bicycle shop where they did so is right down on Third street. Also home of the Air Force Museum, which is chock full of all kinds of air history.

Just outside of Dayton is the Xenia/Yellow Springs area, where Simon Kenton had to run the gauntlet twice, in colonial times. Featured in the book The Frontiersman, Kenton was one tough and woods smart man. Running the gauntlet back then could kill you doing it once even, and after the Indians made Kenton run it they made him do it again. He survived and escaped.

Kanluwen wrote:
Or I can go about 10 minutes and be at Epic Games' offices.

Where their lobby has a freakin' slide built into the staircase.

Alright. I think I like your location the most so far.

Currently, I live near where the Russians first made landfall on Honshu Japan and the birthplace of the monk who got the militaristic Kamakura Bakufu rolling. Before, I lived near where Perry made landfall in Japan and where WWII ended witht the Japanese surrendering on the USS Missouri in Yokosuka. In the UK, I lived near the bridge where King David of Scotland was found after the Scots lost the Battle of Neville's Cross in County Durham.

I also live near Seaworld.

I don't know but apparently wikipedia does.

York minster is 5 minutes walk from my house, and judging by the amount of Americans i see there i think you guys like it! :-)

I live near Stonehenge
The town of Avebury also famous for stones.
About it really.

Well, now I live in London, but I used to live in Takachiho, near Amano-Iwato shrine, where the goddess Ametarasu hid when she got sick of it all, and had to be tempted back out by the other gods so the sun could shine again. Also in Takachiho is Takachiho Gorge, which is awesome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amano-Iwato

http://www.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&q=takachiho%20gorge&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Guitardian wrote:The center of timezones is in some little town on the coast I visited once. It has a 'maritime museum'. Greenwich or grennich or however its spelled.

It had a really cool boat exhibit that was all about the times when England ruled the waves. Umm... 200 years ago or so.

I can say that picadilly circus is quite a spot and full of all sorts of stuff. Elephant n Castle! I'd go there for a pint any time. Its named after 'Le'enfante de castille'... some random arranged marriage to some spanish chick that the locals decided to have fun with the phonetics.

Greenwich is in London. It is just over the other side of the river from me. In fact, I can see some buildings in Greenwich from my own building.

I can also see see Canary Wharf from my living room window.

Basically, London wins this thread

I live next to the Old Donation Episcopal Church, Thoroughgood House, and several other famous houses.

Locally famous we have Mt. Trashmore.

Historically I live near Colonial Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown.

I live in the outer suburbs.

We have Queensland's biggest shopping centre a few KM away. (Chermside). It has a GW and I can't buy products from there as they are too expensive.

mattyrm wrote:York minster is 5 minutes walk from my house, and judging by the amount of Americans i see there i think you guys like it! :-)

Mate, that's all you can come up with for York?! Eboracum? Jorvik? The giant castle with a city inside? Seriously?


For my part, I live in Manchester. There is evidence of humans living here since around 4000 BC, so there's obviously too much to mention but here's a few favourites:

Birthplace of Morrissey/The Smiths, the Stone Roses, The Happy Mondays, Joy Division, Oasis, The Buzzcocks.

The Hacienda.

Site of The Peterloo Massacre.

Roman Fort (Mamicum).

Sinclair's Oyster Bar and the old Wellington Inn - a Pub which is about 400 years old.

The Halle.

Manchester Central Library, which is my favourite building in the city:

Birmingham
Manchester
York
London
Hell even Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Living in the UK I'm pretty much nearby to pretty much every historic and funky location there is!

You can't go anywhere with out tripping over something of historical importance in this country of ours.

My local pub is older than most people's countries.

Albatross wrote:You can't go anywhere with out tripping over something of historical importance in this country of ours.

My local pub is older than most people's countries.

Don't you guys have a historical preservation society that makes sure historically important things don't get destroyed by people recklessly tripping over them during intentional accidents in order to deface and desecrate the spirit of parliamentary monarchy?

WarOne wrote:

Albatross wrote:You can't go anywhere with out tripping over something of historical importance in this country of ours.

My local pub is older than most people's countries.

Don't you guys have a historical preservation society that makes sure historically important things don't get destroyed by people recklessly tripping over them during intentional accidents in order to deface and desecrate the spirit of parliamentary monarchy?

You mean English Heritage?

I lived in Milan once for a couple of months. It has the Duomo cathedral (awesome) and is home to about half the world's fasion designers (not so awesome). There's a lot of history there if you dig around. I saw all sorts of bits and pieces just walking through towntown. Old fountains, statues, little stuff like that, that the natives probably have nicknames for but I could barely understand so I didn't bother to ask.

Where I'm at right now, is the town with the childhood home of our slightly less than famous President Rutherford B. Hayes. WOO! Annie Oakley is from here too. How random.

To makes this work we need two categories, members outside Europe and members inside Europe. Then a third top end category for Londoners.

And a fourth category for the categorizers?

Actually I'm surprised London hasn't just taken over the whole thread yet. Well... there's always Rome to compete with though. I don't see many Romans on this website though so maybe we just got lucky.