Compared to many cities in the European part of Russia, Yekaterinburg is quite young. Yekaterinburg has large industrial enterprises and cultural heritage sites, modern sports facilities and dozens of museums. On its streets you can see both modern skyscrapers and mansions, which are over 200 years old. But the main thing in Yekaterinburg is people. It was they who melted the iron with which they covered the British Parliament building and from which they assembled the frame of the Statue of Liberty. People mined gold in the 19th century and collected tanks a century later. Through their efforts, Yekaterinburg turned into the pearl of the Urals.
1. As befits a harsh working city, Yekaterinburg counts the days and years of its existence not from the banal arrival of the first settlers or the first built house, but from the first blow of a mechanical hammer on a workpiece. This blow took place on November 7 (18), 1723 at a state-owned ironworks.
2. As of January 1, 2018, the population of Yekaterinburg was 1 4468 333 people. This number has been increasing for 12 consecutive years, and the population growth is ensured not only due to the movement of residents to large cities and external migration, which is typical for the current demography, but also due to the excess of birth rates over mortality.
3. The millionth inhabitant of then Sverdlovsk was born in January 1967. Oleg Kuznetsov's parents received a two-room apartment, and a commemorative medal was issued in the city on this occasion.
4. Now everyone knows that she spent her last days in Yekaterinburg and that the royal family was shot. And in 1918, when the former autocrat with his wife and household members was transported to Yekaterinburg, not a single local newspaper wrote about this.
5. On June 1, 1745, the world's first ore gold deposit was discovered in Yekaterinburg. Erofei Markov, who found gold-bearing quartz, was not executed for a small one - no new grains of gold were found in the place indicated by him and it was decided that a cunning peasant had hidden the deposit. The whole village defended Erofei's honesty. And in 1748 the Shartash mine started working.
6. Yekaterinburg also had its own gold rush, and long before California or Alaska. The harsh heroes of Jack London were still listed in the promising projects of their parents, and in Yekaterinburg, thousands of people have already washed the precious metal. The delivery of each pound of gold was marked by a shot from a special cannon. On other days, they had to shoot more than once. In the second quarter of the 19th century, every second kilogram of gold mined in the world was Russian.
7. The phrase "Moscow is speaking!" Yuri Levitan during the war years, to put it mildly, did not correspond to reality. Already in September 1941, the announcers were evacuated to Sverdlovsk. Levitan was broadcasting from the basement of one of the buildings in the city center. Secrecy was maintained so well that even decades after the war, the townspeople considered this information a “duck”. And in 1943, in this sense, Kuibyshev became Moscow - Moscow radio moved there again.
8. Most of the Hermitage's collections were evacuated to Sverdlovsk during the Great Patriotic War. Moreover, the museum staff performed the work of evacuating and returning the exhibits so professionally that not a single exhibit was lost, and only a few storage units needed restoration.
9. In 1979 in Sverdlovsk there was an anthrax epidemic. Officially, then it was explained by eating the meat of infected animals. Later, a version appeared about the leakage of anthrax spores from Sverdlovsk-19, a large research center for biological weapons. However, it is quite possible that the epidemic could also be the result of sabotage - both identified strains were of foreign origin.
10. Yekaterinburg, despite the fact that it was founded by tsarist command, did not acquire its current significance at once. Yekaterinburg became a district city only 58 years after its foundation, and a provincial city only in 1918.
11. In 1991, the metro appeared in Yekaterinburg. It was the last to be commissioned in the Soviet Union. In total, the Ural capital has 9 subway stations, although it was planned to build 40. Travel is paid with tokens with the inscription “Moscow Metro”. And Vyacheslav Butusov took part in the design of the Prospekt Cosmonauts station when he was a student at the Architectural Institute.
12. Sometimes Yekaterinburg is called almost the birthplace of Russian biathlon. In fact, in 1957, the first championship of the Soviet Union in this sport was held here. It was won by the Muscovite Vladimir Marinychev, who ran the fastest distance of 30 km with one firing line, on which it was necessary to shoot two balloons inflated with air. But the championship concerns Yekaterinburg only from the point of view of the USSR championships - biathlon competitions were held in the Soviet Union before. In Yekaterinburg, the biathlon school is well developed: Sergei Chepikov became the Olympic champion twice, Yuri Kashkarov and Anton Shipulin, who continues to perform, won one Olympic gold medal each.
13. In 2018, four World Cup matches were held at the reconstructed Yekaterinburg-Arena stadium. During the game Mexico - Sweden (0: 3), an absolute record of attendance at the stadium was set - the audience filled 33,061 seats.
14. On the 275th anniversary of the founding of Yekaterinburg, a monument to VN Tatishchev and V. De Gennin, who made a great contribution to the founding of the city, was erected on the Labor Square. The monument is signed, but due to an oversight the figure of Tatishchev was on the right, and his name on the left, and vice versa.
15. At the Sverdlovsk / Yekaterinburg film studio, such well-known films as “Nameless Star”, “Find and Disarm”, “Semyon Dezhnev”, “Cargo 300” and “Admiral” were shot.
16. Alexander Demyanenko, Alexander Balabanov, Stanislav Govorukhin, Vladimir Gostyukhin, Sergey Gerasimov, Grigory Alexandrov and other prominent figures of cinema were born in Yekaterinburg.
17. It is necessary to write a separate article about Yekaterinburg rock - listing of talented and popular bands and musicians will take up too much space. With all the stylistic diversity, Yekaterinburg rock groups have always been distinguished by the absence of excessive speculation in the texts and music that is simple enough for the average listener to perceive. And without taking into account rock performers, the list of famous Yekaterinburg musicians is impressive: Yuri Loza, Alexander Malinin, Vladimir Mulyavin, both Presnyakovs, Alexander Novikov ...
18. The most beautiful building in Yekaterinburg is Sevastyanov's house. The building was built in the early 19th century in the classicist style. In the 1860s, Nikolay Sevastyanov bought it. On his instructions, the reconstruction of the facade was carried out, after which the building acquired a pretentious elegant look. The last reconstruction of the house was carried out in 2008-2009, after which the Sevastyanov house became the residence of the President of Russia.
19. The tallest building in the city is the Iset Tower residential complex, which was commissioned in 2017. The building is almost 213 meters high (52 floors) and houses residential apartments, restaurants, a fitness center, shops, a kids club and parking lots.
20. In Yekaterinburg there is a unique pedestrian tourist route "Red Line" (this is really a red line, indicating the route through the streets). Just 6.5 kilometers from this sightseeing loop, there are 35 historical sights of the city. There is a telephone number next to each historical site. By calling it, you can hear a short story about a building or monument.
