"People often call New York 'The Big Apple?. Why?
In the 1920s and 1930s, jazz musisians all wanted to work in New York.
'There are a lot of apples on the tree', they said, 'but when you take New York City, you take The Big Apple Apple!'
Yes, everybody wanted some of The Big Apple - and they want some today, too!
More than twenty million people visit New York every year. Lots of them say it is the most exciting city in the world.
When visitors think about New York, they usually think about Manhattan - an island 21.5 kilometres long and 3.7 kilometres wide. But New York city ha five 'boroughs': Manhattan, Bro0klyn, The Bronkx,Queens and Staten Island. The city has 10,000 kilometres of streets, and seven million or more people live there.
But New York was not always a big city..."
in Factfiles, Oxford bookworms1
