Things you didn't know about... Bath

It once rained jellyfish in Bath
In August 1894, it's reported that parts of the town were covered in thousands of jellyfish that had apparently rained down from the sky.

Bath is the birthplace of the postal service
In the 18th century, quarry owner Ralph Allen developed postal routes centred in Bath, which grew to form the modern postal network. The world's first stamps were sent from Bath, and the Bath Postal Museum is located at the address the first letter was sent from.

Bath is the land of the Bath chair
It was of course in Bath that 18th-century inventors and furniture-makers developed the Bath chair, a three-wheeled, prototypical wheelchair.

Shorthand made its debut in Bath
Isaac Pitman's revolutionary shorthand system was first taught at the Bath Mechanics Institute in 1839.

Jawbone is a local culinary delight
Bath's daily covered market sells a local delicacy, The Bath Chap—pigs' jawbone and cheek, salted and smoked for your delectation.

Bath has a ghostly admiral
The ghost of Admiral Arthur Philip (1738-1814) first Governor of New South Wales, has reportedly been sighted dozens of times around Bath over the past 60 years. Sporting a black hat and long cloak, his apparition has graced the Assembly Rooms, Bennett Street and Saville Row.

Monolo Blahnik is a Bath resident
Revered shoe designer Manolo Blahnik lives in a Georgian house in Bath. Blahnik shares his home with a collection of 10,000 pairs of what he lovingly refers to as his "stupid shoes".

A Rastafarian icon lived here
The exiled Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I, icon of the Rastafarian religion, spent the four years from 1936 to 1940 at Fairfield House in Bath.

The Roman Baths contain nasty messages from the past
Archaeologists have recovered Roman "curse tablets"—messages scratched onto metal plates—from the Sacred Spring at the Roman Baths. It was a Roman custom for citizens to write revenge messages on tablets seeking retribution from people who had wronged them and then to fling their nasty requests into the waters for the attention of the Goddess Sulis Minerva.

Hollywood comes to Bath
American actors Johnny Depp and Nicolas Cage both have houses in Bath.

The legends of the swans of Longleat
Legend has it that if all the swans were to leave the nearby Longleat House estate, then the owners would soon die, ending the family bloodline.