NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT*

The total area of New York City is 301 square miles. Manhattan, New York City's best-known borough is only 22,7 square miles. Within the city limits there are 6,374 miles of streets.

There are approximately ten million bricks in the Empire State Building.

More than one-fourth of the worlds gold bullion is stored in New York, at the Federal Reserve Bank on Maiden Lane (well it was prior to the Toxic Debt Credit Crisis!)

The Statute of Liberty's index finger is eight feet long.

There are 578 miles of waterfront in New York City.

The average speed for cross-town automobile traffic in New York City is less than six miles per hour. The maximum possible average speed for cross-town traffic, as maintained by the timing of traffic lights, is fifteen miles an hour.

There are more than 2,000 surveillance cameras keeping watch over Nre York City - so be warned.
In New York, rats may outnumber people by as much as four to one; the rat population is somewhere between ten and fifty million. The above picture illustrates quite graphically the dangers of allowing rats to live off pizza, hot dogs and New York cheesecake scraps.

New Yorkers produce approximately 26,400,000 pounds of garbage everyday. Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island is the worlds largest landfill. It was in constant use from 1948 to 2001, and covers 2,800 acres. The surface of the landfill is now covered and landscaped. Considered as a single mass, the landfill is the largest human-made object in the world.

* Peter Sellars imitating Sir Michael Caine on the Michael Parkinson Show.