10 Facts about Belfast you might not know

1. The first event to take place in the Odyssey Arena was a Belfast Giants ice hockey game in December 2000. In case you’re wondering, they lost.

2. The famous Harland and Wolff cranes are called Samson and Goliath. A common mistake people make is to call them David and Goliath while some have been known to refer to them as Samson and Delilah.

3. Led Zeppelin’s Stairway To Heaven was first played live in the Ulster Hall. As it was a new song most of the audience took the opportunity to go to the bar.

4. Belfast has the world’s largest dry dock.

5. The Alice Clock, situated on the piazza at Fountain Centre, is the only automaton clock in Ireland.

6. John Wood Dunlop invented the pneumatic tyre in Belfast in 1887.

7. The Holylands residential area is so called because all of the streets there are named after places that the developer visited on a trip to Palestine and Egypt.

8. The Obel Tower is the tallest building in Belfast and Northern Ireland. It consists of a 28-storey residential tower and an adjoining six-storey office block.

9. Up until very recently the smallest house in Belfast was on Great Victoria Street. It measured approximately three metres across and at one time housed the sexton of the Baptist Church next door. But then they demolished it.

10. Belfast’s motto is Pro tanto quid retribuamus. It’s translated as “What return shall we make for so much?”

This article first appeared on www.belfastvibe.com