Saturday, January 30, 2016

The Washing Machine Capital of the World


Atlas Obscura had a lot of success last year with their Punny Businesses in America map. The map was a crowd-sourced map of local businesses which use a little word play in their titles (such as the Slim Chickens restaurant in Fayetteville, AR).

Atlas Obscura's latest map is an attempt to locate towns and cities around the world which try to claim a little notoriety through the use of a 'World Capital of ...' subtitle. Lots of places claim to be the capital of a product, a variety of food or even a state of mind. Atlas Obscura has rewarded them for this temerity with a special place on the Map of 90 of the World's Most Surprising Capitals.

To be fair some of the 'World Capital of' titles are probably not actually claimed by the locations so named on this map. I'm fairly sure that Nuuk in Greenland doesn't send out publicity material bearing a 'World Capital of Suicide' slogan. I'm also not entirely convinced that Clinton, Montana calls itself 'The Testicle Capital of the World', despite their obvious pride in holding the annual Testicle Festival.

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