The metropolitan area of Las Vegas has well over 2.2 million people.

Although rainfall is rare in Las Vegas, flooding can occur quickly due to the ground’s poor ability to absorb water.

Las Vegas has many nicknames, including Vegas, Sin City, America’s Marriage Capital, Hawaii’s Ninth Island, and The Entertainment Capital of the World, just to name a few.

Las Vegas was founded in 1905 and incorporated in 1911. In 1999, it became the most populated American city founded in the same century. Chicago held the same distinction for the 19th century.

Standing at 27 feet tall, the chocolate fountain at the Bellagio Hotel is the tallest of its kind in the world.

The Las Vegas Strip is not technically in Las Vegas, as it lies outside the city limits in the towns of Paradise and Winchester.

The first Native Americans to reach the Las Vegas area arrived about 10,000 years ago. However, the more recent Native American inhabitants, who lived there before European settlers arrived, established themselves around 2,000 years ago.

The earliest members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built a fort in Las Vegas to serve as a bridge between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. This Mormon fort only lasted a few years before being abandoned.

In 1829, Mexican explorer Antonio Armijo laid the groundwork for the eventual founding of Las Vegas. The city gets its name from the Spanish word Las Vegas, meaning The Meadows, due to the natural springs originally found there. In Spanish, “Vegas” is pronounced with a “B” sound instead of a “V” at the beginning.

In the 1950s, a site 65 miles from Las Vegas became a nuclear testing ground. Residents could see mushroom clouds and were, unfortunately, exposed to fallout. In 1963, these tests were moved underground, but the previous above-ground tests had already earned Las Vegas the nickname Atomic City.

Gambling became legal in Las Vegas in 1931, paving the way for it to become the casino capital of the world.

Part of Las Vegas’s success was due to the construction of the Hoover Dam, which brought thousands of workers to the area and heavily boosted the local economy.

Las Vegas was once a hotspot for mafia members, who played a major role in shaping the casino industry into what it is today. Bugsy Siegel is perhaps the most famous of these figures.

The first casino on the Las Vegas Strip was the El Rancho Vegas, which opened in 1941.

The Silver Slipper was a casino in Las Vegas during the 1950s that featured an ice rink as its floor.

Shrimp is incredibly popular in Las Vegas, so much so that residents consume more shrimp per day than the entire rest of the United States combined.

The Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas lives up to its name—it houses a 60-pound gold nugget, one of the largest in the world.

Las Vegas is known as the wedding capital of the world, with an average of 300 couples getting married there each day.

The light beam from the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas is the strongest in the world and can be seen from outer space.

Las Vegas has the largest number of hotel rooms in the world, with over 150,000.

While many hotel rooms in Las Vegas can be quite inexpensive, the most expensive suites can cost up to $100,000 per night.

The water fountains at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas can shoot up to 460 feet into the air—more than 40 stories high.