The glorious city of Manchester gave the world great things, the Gallagher brothers, Mick Hucknall, Manchester City FC and the Communist manifesto. Marx and Engels seeing all the industrialisation occuring in this city figured out that wealth should be spread around more evenly, many years before the Soviets tweaked it further and put it to practice.
Manchester today is the 3rd most visited city in the UK and a powerhouse metropolis, with its wider metropolitan economy having the 3rd largest GDP in the UK.

The following world-first feat theoretically should be shared with Manchester too since it is the Liverpool and Manchester Railway (L&MR) which is on the podium. The L&MR was the world’s first twin-tracked inter-urban passenger railway, where all trains were timetabled and ticketed. The line opened on 15th September 1830, initially built to provide faster transport of raw materials and finished goods between the port of Liverpool…