Asklemmy

PANAMA!

Van Halen, spring break, population 35,600.

I legitimately though Oregon was a State, I didn't know it was also a city.

From my country I'm going to be generous and say Barcelona. Second biggest city here. I doubt next bigger cities are universally known.

In Slovenia I believe Sevnica (4.5k population) - home town of Melania Trump - would be the smallest most recognizable place by the world.

But Slovenia is small enough even Kostanjevica na Krki with 802 or Vače with 421 population is easily recognizable by Slovenians.

ottawa

I’m in the US and I can’t say I’d heard of Oregon City before this post…

Unfortunately, I would guess that school shooter locations are probably the most easily recognised in the US. Uvalde has a population of ~15,000, for instance.

I think people really overestimate how much everybody knows about the US.

I'd say there's a large population that only know NYC, LA, and Chicago.

Gibraltar has a population of 32,000, which by some definitions is too small to be considered a city.

Nokia, Finland, population 36,000. Cellphones, tyres, rubber boots, ...

Schengen - the village in Luxembourg where the Schengen Agreement was signed. The population was 5196 in 2023 (appears to be the last census quoted on Wikipedia) and the "Schengen Area", covered by the agreement represents 450m people.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Area

Dildo, Newfoundland.

Not really though.

Off the top of my head I’d say places like Gander, Churchill, Iqaluit - places known maybe for their location as much as their people and unique situations?

Edit: another comment (Aspen) made me want to mention Banff but Alberta isn’t acting Canadian anymore so it no longer counts.

For France it's probably Vichy, infamously well known internationally for being the capital of the French pro-Nazi government during the Occupation. Only 25'000 inhabitants.

Paris. It's also a city in Texas.

Not my location, but Scranton, PA?

Chornobyl, Ukraine. "50 thousand people used to live here, now it's a ghost town"

There are many more ghost towns now, due to the war. Adviivka, Bakhmut and many others, some small, some relatively big. Everyone has heard of those small cities.

I'm not from there, but who doesn't know the name of Scunthorpe?

Hell, Michigan

It might not count as a city but Nome Alaska has the Iditarod with only, 3700 people. Or maybe some famous battlefield, Gettysburg has 7100 people. A ski resort like Aspen could count with 7000. We all had to memorize state capitals so maybe somewhere like Montpelier, Vermont has more recognition but has 7800 people.

If you mean people from my country.... All of them.

New Zealand only has like 10 actual cities. It is not some great feat of memory to know them all.

I guess the one that pretty much everyone knows in Germany is Buxtehude. It is being used as the poster child for a backwards town, far away from cities. Which is funny because neither is it backwards, remote or even very small. With a population of 40k it’s relatively large, compared to many other places in Germany, even just right next to Buxtehude. It is not far from Hamburg and its historic core is worth a visit. I think the name itself is the reason why it is being made fun of so much. Though there are so many other, much quirkier named towns in Germany but it somehow became Buxtehude.

Not a city as much as part of a city, but Coney Island is pretty well known. I was recently speaking to someone in Colombia and even they knew of it!

(I'm part of the sideshow cast there ☺️)