NEXT STOP;NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

TEN TRIVIAL FACTS ABOUT NOLA!

1. New Orleans was founded in 1718 by Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville. At first, the community was nothing more than a trading camp on the curving east bank of the Mississippi River. Later, the city was organized into a rectangular, fortified community, which still exists today as the French Quarter. The original streets, laid out in a grid, were named for French royalty and nobility.
2. Canal Street, once the widest street in the world, was named for a canal that was planned for, but never built, on the street's dividing median. For decades, the median's only use was public transportation, mostly by the Canal Street streetcars.
3. Young, high-society Creole maidens were not allowed to wear velvet or glance into the eyes of young men.
4. The game of craps was brought in New Orleans by Bernard de Marigny; its name probably derives from "crapaud," the French word for "frog," since some Americans thought of the French as frog-eaters.
5. When ice got too expensive, some Creole families who loved to entertain would crush glass and sew it into cheesecloth bags, floating the bags in water pitchers to mimic the tinkle of ice.
6. The St. Louis Cathedral is the oldest continually operating cathedral in the United States. 
7. Several of Louisiana's lovely, historic plantations feature floor-level mirrors, in which ladies could ensure that no ankle was showing. 
8. New Orleans is where opera was first performed in the U.S., back in 1796.
9. Poker was invented in New Orleans in the 1700s.
10. New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, which still reigns supreme in the city today. Later, jazz spawned both the blues and rock and roll.