20 Impressive data that almost no one knows about the city of Rio de Janeiro

The city of Rio de Janeiro was founded in 1502 and currently has almost 7 million inhabitants, being considered the second largest metropolis in Brazil. Despite being one of the most chosen destinations by Brazilians and foreigners, it has many curiosities that even the residents themselves are unaware of. We list, then, some interesting data about this most loved Brazilian city in the world.

Check out these 20 curiosities that we, from awesome.club, we selected for you.

Despite having more than 200 rivers running through the city, in 1502 when Gaspar de Lemos arrived on the coast of Rio, he entered through Guanabara Bay. At the time, he named the city, thinking it was on a large river and because it happened in January, making it Rio de Janeiro. Many scholars claim that there was no confusion and that the nomenclature (river or bay) was unique at the time.

The Bangu neighborhood is considered one of the hottest according to Inmet (National Institute of Meteorology) with a record of 43.1°. Situated between the Pedra Branca and Gericinó massifs, this neighborhood is in a valley and the mountains make it difficult for the wind to circulate. Another aggravating factor was population growth, which stimulated the reduction of Atlantic Forest coverage, increasing the sensation of heat.

With the arrival of the Portuguese Royal Family to Brazil, in 1807, one of the greatest treasures of Portugal also arrived, the 60 thousand volumes of books that made up the Royal Library. After being installed in the country, Dom João VI started what is now the National Library. It is currently the eighth largest library in the world and the largest in Latin America, with more than 15 million items.

Sponsored by a travel agency, researcher Anya Hohnbaum traveled the world in search of the most perfect blue sky, and elected Rio de Janeiro as the winning place. To make this statement, she visited 20 countries in 72 days in the year 2006 and used equipment called a spectrometer, which was specially developed by scientists from the British National Physical Laboratory🇧🇷

Guanabara Bay is spread over 15 cities and is the second largest in the country, with no less than 53 beaches and more than a hundred islands. Among the best known are Ilha do Governador, which is where the Galeão International Airport is located, and Fundão Island, where the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) is located.

At the beginning of the 20th century there was the unofficial carnival, as samba was a musical and dance genre that was somewhat marginalized at the time. They were blocks formed by simple people who lived in poor communities and who organized themselves with the intention of having fun. Years later, in 1928, the first official samba school debuted in Brazil and was called “Deixa Falar”, which paraded a year later in the streets of Rio de Janeiro.

The King Momo that we know, appeared in Brazil in 1933 as the figure of a happy, good-natured and gluttonous man. Every year, the Carnival King is elected by people connected to the event and there is even a state law to establish rules on voting. On the first day of revelry, the mayor of the city of Rio hands over the key to Momo, symbolizing that he is in charge of the City during Carnival.

Those born in the state of Rio de Janeiro, according to the list of patriotic adjectives, are called cariocas. Those who were born in the city of Rio, are called Fluminense and this is due to the derivation of the word that came from the Latin “flumine” (=river) + “ense” (=natural), which means: natural from the river. Remembering that, as mentioned in item 1, the explorer who arrived in the city in the 16th century thought that the bay was a river.

Although many attribute this title to the Tijuca Forest, it is the Pedra Branca State Park that has the largest area, with no less than 125 square kilometers of preserved forest. According to scholars, the park covers about 10% of the city of Rio de Janeiro and is located between the neighborhoods of Jacarepaguá and Campo Grande.

Many foreigners are surprised when they discover that Rio de Janeiro is no longer the capital of Brazil, but this fact was true until the 60s. This confusion is caused by the move of the Portuguese Royal Family to Rio, in 1808. This exchange transformed the city in the capital of the Kingdom of Portugal for many years, giving it a great political importance for the vast Portuguese Overseas Empire.

According to FIFA, the largest audience that gathered to watch a football match was that of the World Cup final on July 16, 1950, at the Maracanã Stadium. In that match, Brazil and Uruguay played and our country lost 2×1. The total audience was almost 200 thousand people inside the stadium, of which 173,850 were paying.

The most famous statue in the country was inaugurated on the day of the patron saint of Brazil, October 12, 1931, and is 38 meters high. It was designed by Frenchman Albert Caquot, carved from Swedish stones by Frenchman Paul Landowski and took 9 years to complete. It was elected one of the New Wonders of the Modern World, alongside works such as the Indian Taj Mahal and the Coliseum in Rome.

This sport was created in Rio in the 50’s and the inventor was the architect Caio Rubens Romero Lyra who loved to play tennis on Copacabana beach. As the rackets pierced because of the sea air, he asked a woodworking friend to make wooden rackets. With the change of equipment and the beach as a court, a few years later the game was renamed Frescobol.

According to a survey by the TripAdvisor website, which considered user interactions on the platform, Rio de Janeiro is the main tourist destination in the Southern Hemisphere. Every year, in the summer alone, the city receives more than 40% of tourists who travel to Brazil. About 3 million foreigners land in the city and spend more than 500 million dollars a year (EMBRATUR).

In 2004, the scientist from Mato Grosso, Paulo Antônio de Souza Júnior, verified that the Spirit robot, which explores the red planet, made images of a basalt rock with an interesting shape. He, who is the only Brazilian researcher to be part of the NASA mission on Mars, found the rock very similar to the Brazilian tourist spot and named it Sugarloaf Mountain.

A marchinha, which became well known for having won second place in a Carnival song contest, was responsible for the city’s well-known nickname. The song was composed by André Filho, who teamed up with Aurora Miranda (Carmem Miranda’s sister) and ended up becoming an official anthem of the municipality of Rio, which is certainly wonderful.

The word that gave the place its name is in the Quechua language, which was the language of the Inca peoples, “Copakawana” which means “the one who throws the precious stone”. In Posto 6 of this beach, since 2002, there is a statue of an illustrious resident: Carlos Drummond de Andrade. He lived in the neighborhood for 36 years and used to sit thoughtfully on the same bench where the monument in his honor now stands.

Cais de Valongo is located in the port area of ​​the city and was the largest port and slave market in the country. Today, the site is considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, as it is the only material vestige of the arrival of enslaved Africans in the Americas. Although it was a difficult part of our history, we were gifted by the African people with a beautiful cultural heritage.

The Rio-Niterói Bridge (President Costa e Silva Bridge) began construction in 1974 and took no less than 11 years to complete. It connects the two metropolitan cities that are separated by Guanabara Bay. It is currently the longest prestressed concrete bridge in the Southern Hemisphere and the eleventh longest in the world, at almost 14 kilometers in length.

One of the postcards of the city of Rio de Janeiro, the Cable Car of Pão de Açúcar was the first cable car in Brazil and the third in the world. According to historian Vieira Fazenda, the name was given at the height of sugarcane cultivation in Brazil, when the sugar blocks had a curious conical shape, similar to mountains.

Did you like these trivia? Is there anything that should be on this list that we didn’t mention? Tell us.