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- Austin's official slogan is Live Music Capital of the World and hosts events such as SXSW and Austin City Limits.
- Darrel K Royal - Texas Memorial Stadium (The University of Texas football stadium) seats over 101,000 people.
- Austin was settled by pioneers that originally named the village Waterloo. It was renamed after Stephen F. Austin who is considered to be the father of Texas.
- Austin is the headquarters of four Fortune 500 companies: Whole Foods Market, Freescale Semiconductor, Dell, and Forestar Group.
- The website, Ain't It Cool News is based in Austin and every year it's owner, Harry Knowles, hosts a Butt-Numb-A-Thon at the Alamo Drafthouse. The Butt-Numb-A-Thon is a 24 hour movie marathon where the first public screenings some movies are held (Lord of the Rings, V for Vendetta, and 300 are among the movies that had world premieres at this event).
- It has 11 sister cities.
- I have heard Austin/Travis County referred to as "The Blue Oasis" because it is fairly liberal and is surrounded by a sea of "Red" (conservative) counties.
- Residents of Austin are known as "Austinites".
- Austin is a very dog friendly city and is host to the annual event, Mighty Texas Dog Walk. In 2010, the walk broke the previous record held by England (10,272 dogs walked) by walking 11,256 dogs. My dog Max and I participated in this record breaking event! There also appears to be some controversy as England has posted that they walked 18,113 dogs in their Great North Dog Walk event.
- Austin is known as "Silicon Hills" because of the large number of high-tech companies that have offices in the city.
- The city is home to North America's largest urban bat population. 1.5 million Mexican Free-Tailed bats roost under the Congress Avenue Bridge from April to November.
- Austin is the 15th largest city in the United States (population: 735,000)
- The State Capitol building is 302 feet high and is made of "Sunset Red" granite.
(all pictures taken from Wikipedia)
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