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Why Is New York City Called 'The Big Apple'?

Plus how other cities got their nicknames.

A lot of the world's big cities have nicknames, some fairly obvious but others not so much.

Chicago is known as The Windy City (that one is pretty self explanatory), while London has been coined The Big Smoke. It was given that name because of the fog which engulfed the city in the 19th century, with the phrase first appearing in a book of slang in 1874.

One nickname, though, isn't quite so easy to guess. Have you ever wondered why New York City is famously known as The Big Apple? Well, there's a few theories floating around but it turns out that the term originally dates back to the 1920s when horse racing was big in the city and the prizes were apples.

A journalist covering the races, John Fitz Gerald, apparently overheard stable hands saying they were going to 'The Big Apple' to work at the event. He used the phrase in one of his newspaper columns and it picked up from there.

It was then used by jazz musicians in the 1930s and made a resurgence again in the 1970s when it was used in a tourist campaign. It was that campaign that made the phrase famous.

To learn about how other cities got their colloquial names, check out the below infographic.

Infographic by Globehunters.com

Why Is New York City Called 'The Big Apple?

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