* The extensive, interlocking system of parks and boulevards set aside by visionary planners in the 1890s prompted writers to call the Kansas City area “Paris on the Plains.”

* More than 200 fountains in the area earned Kansas City, Missouri, its nickname, “The City of Fountains.”

* Kansas City is the number 1 inland trade zone in area, and is the second-largest rail centre in the United States.

* Opened in 1922, the Country Club Plaza was the first shopping area planned for the automobile. Its 12 towers and numerous fountains and artworks were modelled after Seville, Spain.

* The distinctive swing sound of Kansas City jazz dates to the mid-1930s, when Count Basie played local clubs.

* Kansas City is third in the nation for professional theatres per capita, with performances offered by a dozen companies.

* Boasting one of the tallest, largest and fastest roller coasters in the world, the theme of Kansas City’s Worlds of Fun amusement park was based on Jules Verne’s “Around the World in Eighty Days.”

* Kansas, and hence Kansas City, was named for the Kansa, or Kaw, Indians. Kansas means “people of the south wind.” Kansas first appeared on maps drawn by French explorers Louis Joliet and Father Jacques Marquette.

* Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, is the only intertribal university for Native Americans in the United States. Its enrolment represents more than 100 tribes.

* People of German and German-Russian background are numerous in the Kansas City area, and settled widely in the state of Kansas in the late 1870s.

* Famous explorers Lewis and Clark explored the territory that would become Kansas City between 1804 and 1806.

* The Santa Fe Trail, established in 1821, was one of the longest commercial routes in the pre-railroad era, running 1,255 kilometres from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

* The ruts created by heavily loaded ox-pulled wagons along the Santa Fe and Oregon Trails may still be seen. Santa Fe Trail markers may be seen in throughout the area, including in Olathe and Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

* Famed abolitionist John Brown came to Kansas Territory in 1855 and during a three-year stay staged several armed skirmishes and freed some Missouri slaves.

* Kansas was in the centre of the great bison (or buffalo) range until the 1870s.

* The Quindaro Ruins in Kansas City, Kansas, where runaway slaves landed upon their arrival in the free state of Kansas, is the largest underground railroad archaeological site in the nation.

* The first African-Americans officially recognized by the U.S. government as front-line troops, the 1st and 2nd Kansas Colored Infantry, were trained in 1864 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The famed 10th U.S. Cavalry, the “Buffalo Soldiers,” organized there in 1867.

* Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse, attended art school in Kansas City and experimented with the process of animation in a tiny upstairs studio on 31st Street in Kansas City, Missouri, in the 1920s.

* Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean (1928) and the first to fly solo across the Atlantic (1932), was born in Atchison, Kansas. Earhart broke numerous records before being lost on an around-the-world flight in 1937.

* Professional golfer Tom Watson is a native of Overland Park, Kansas.

* Rocker and television personality Melissa Etheridge was born in Leavenworth, Kansas.