Things you didn't know about... Blackpool

If Blackpool was in Ireland...
...it would be called Dublin. In Gaelic "Duibh-linn" means "the black pool".

Blackpool was a star of the silent screen
Silent movie Hindle Wakes was made in 1927 and is mostly set in Blackpool. It's the story of a young woman defying her parents to find romance on her holidays. "Wakes" refers to the weeks when mill towns closed down for a week to enable maintenance to be done—so everyone cleared off to the seaside. On these holiday periods Blackpool made its fortune. Some towns still have wakes weeks incidentally—but no mills.

People from Blackpool are known as "sandgrown"
An expression of unknown origin, there is also a cocktail of the same name—dark rum, sweet Vermouth, cherry brandy, lemon and sugar. Bracing!

A 12 ft tall monster was displayed in Blackpool
In 1960 the Museum of Curiosities showed the body of Kap-Dwa, a 3.7 m (12 ft) "two-headed Patagonian giant". Purportedly captured by Spanish sailors in 1673, he apparently killed four of his captors on the boat home before being himself killed. Most agree the body was a fake, even though a radiologist examined it and could not declare it to be so.

Blackpool was the first municipality in the world to have electric street lighting
In 1879, eight huge arc lights provided "artificial sunshine". They commemorated the event with... a simulated naval attack.

Blackpool is a hazard to shipping
Because of the fierce onshore winds and extensive shifting sands, Blackpool is home to many wrecks, including the Abana, which was wrecked when the captain mistook the Blackpool Tower for a lighthouse.

Blackpool was the site of a strange murder in 1919
On Christmas Eve a Kitty Breaks was found shot to death on the dunes near Blackpool.

Her live-in lover Lieutenant Frederick Rothwell Holt was charged with her murder—his service revolver had been used. He had been previously invalided out from the trenches with shellshock—and a blameless record—and his defence for the killing was insanity (he also claimed that the police had tried to kill him using mad dogs, germ-carrying flies and gas).

That he had taken out life insurance on Kitty counted somewhat against him. He was hanged a year later in Strangeways.

Blackpool boasts a "High Tide Organ"
This 15 m (50 ft) structure is as much a sculpture as it is a musical instrument, and is operated by the flow of tidal waters passing through eight pipes which compress air through 18 organ pipes—in prior to, and out after, high tide. It sounds very random.

1939—the year the Blackpool Illuminations stayed off
Despite 22 weeks preparing the 1 million lamps, the outbreak of war meant they were never switched on.