MANCHESTER

MANCHESTER was in the news last week though hosting the Tory Party Conference.

We all know it’s the place where people being written out of EastEnders go and it’s been home to your Sunday Sport for almost 30 years.

But what else is there about Manchester?

Here are some facts you may not know… IT is the only place in the world where you can take a degree in Mummy Studies. The University of Manchester has a long history in Egyptian research, and there’s even a Mummy Tissue Bank. A TINY chapel in Salford was the British birthplace of vegetarianism over 200 years ago. Reverend William Cowherd preached the virtues of a vegetarian diet – at The Beefsteak Chapel. APPROPRIATELY enough as home of

the city’s Roman name – Mamucium – means “breast- shaped hill”. THE nation’s first free library opened in Manchester in 1653. Housed in a building built in 1421, Chetham’s is the oldest public library in the English speaking world. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels met there and invented Communism. ROLLS- Royce Limited was created in Manchester in 1904, when salesman Charles Rolls met engineer Henry Royce at The Midland Hotel.

world’s first programmable computer, the SmallScale Experimental Machine, known as the “Baby”, was designed and built at The University of Manchester in 1948. Baby weighed half a ton and took up most of a large room.

the Liverpool & Manchester Railway opened in 1830 it was the world’s first purposebuilt passenger railway in which all services were hauled by timetabled steam locomotives.

studio where Dangermouse was created, in the city’s Chorlton suburb, is now retirement flats.

Russian students in 1994, the Queen apparently said, said Manchester was “not such a nice place”. IN 1888 the world’s first professional football league was set up at the city’s Royal Hotel.