Curated playlist
Capital cities in Asia
- BeirutBeirut's name comes from the Phoenician word for wells. Water near the surface mattered most in that dry land.
- KabulKabul was once nicknamed the Paris of Central Asia. By 1996, about 80 percent of the city was destroyed.
- ManamaFrom 1929 to 1931, cultured pearls cost Bahrain's pearl traders more than two-thirds of income.
- Diego GarciaDiego Garcia is a ring of coral in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and in 1966 it held 924 people, mostly contract workers on coconut plantations. Today, according to David Vine, between 3,000 and 5,000 American troops and civilian support…
- BangkokBangkok's full ceremonial name has 168 letters, a Guinness World Records entry.
- SanaaSanaa could become the first national capital to run out of water. Its aquifer is estimated to run dry by around 2030.
- Abu DhabiAbu Dhabi's name means "Father of Gazelle." It traces to a 1761 hunting party that found fresh water.
- SeoulSeoul must stay South Korea's capital, a court ruled in 2004. Ministries still drift to Sejong City.
- BaghdadBy the middle of the 9th century, Baghdad's House of Wisdom held the largest selection of books on earth.
- JerusalemJerusalem has been besieged 23 times and captured and recaptured 44 times.
- JakartaParts of Jakarta already sit below sea level, and the ground is still sinking.
- SingaporeIn 1965, Malaysia's Parliament voted 126 to 0 to expel Singapore from its federation. It had joined in 1963.
- DhakaDhaka's muslin was so famous that distant markets simply called the cloth "Daka".
- DamascusDamascus once drew an extravagant outburst from Mark Twain in his travel book The Innocents Abroad. He addressed the city directly. "Though old as history itself, thou art fresh as the breath of spring," he wrote. He went on to call it…
- BeijingBeijing once tore down its own Ming city wall to build a subway. The wall stood until 1965.
- TokyoBy 1990, the land under Tokyo's Imperial Palace was estimated to be worth more than all of California.
- DelhiDelhi's name has three competing origin stories. One says a king named Dhillu built the city in 50 BCE.
- IslamabadIslamabad drew more than 1.2 million people in 2004 for the annual Urs of Bari Imam. That gathering was bigger than the 1.1 million residents the city counts today. Islamabad is the capital of Pakistan, yet it ranks only tenth among the…
- New DelhiKing George V announced in December 1911 that British India's capital would move from Calcutta to Delhi.