97 Fun Facts About Subway

The family friend who lent a teenage Fred DeLuca the money to open Subway was what kind of scientist?

Physicist: he was helping to design nuclear power plants when he put up the cash so the 17-year-old could pay for college, and the two founding families still owned the chain when it was sold 58 years later.

What was the Subway chain's original name when its first shop opened in 1965?

Pete's Super Submarines honoured the family friend who put up the money, but on local radio the name sounded like 'pizza marines', so the partners changed it and ended up with Subway.

How much did Fred DeLuca borrow to open the first Subway?

He was 17 and hoping to fund medical school; the chain he built was sold to Roark Capital for $9.6 billion in 2023.

About how many Subway restaurants were there worldwide as of 2023?

37,000 or so, in more than 100 countries, was a retreat: Subway's own website still boasted of more than 40,000 shops in 2019, before years of closures across the United States.

In 2008 Subway launched a famous promotion selling every regular one-foot sandwich for how much?

$5 was meant as a limited-time price, but the deal and its jingle caught on so fast that it became the chain's most successful promotion and stayed on the menu for years.

What two-word slogan did Subway use to stress its freshly baked bread?

Eat Fresh sold the bread baked in every shop, yet in 2020 a national supreme court ruled that same bread too sugary to count as bread for tax purposes.

Which country's Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that Subway's bread was too sugary to be legally bread?

Ireland's top court found the dough's sugar came to 10% of the flour's weight, five times the 2% limit for bread, so the rolls could not be sold tax-free as a staple food.

Which Indiana student became the face of Subway's ads in 2000 after losing 245 lb on a diet of its sandwiches?

Jared Fogle fronted the ads for 15 years, though the chain leaned on him less once price deals took over in 2008, and it cut ties in 2015 when he faced federal charges.

The first Subway opened in 1965 in the port city of Bridgeport, in which US state?

Connecticut: Fred DeLuca opened the shop in Bridgeport to pay his way through the city's university, and he did go on to graduate there.

What job title does Subway give the staff who assemble your order?

Sandwich Artist is the trademarked title for the crew who build each sub to order in front of the customer, and the chain says countless shop owners started out as one.

Which private-equity firm, named after the protagonist of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, agreed to buy Subway in August 2023?

Roark Capital already backed the owner of Arby's, Dunkin' and Jimmy John's, so the deal put Subway in the same stable as a rival sandwich chain after 58 years in its founding families' hands.

Which regional name for the submarine sandwich originated in the Philadelphia area?

Hoagie is Philadelphia's word, and its origin is a local argument: one telling credits Italian shipyard workers on Hog Island, another the songwriter Hoagy Carmichael.

Which railway company opened the world's first underground passenger line in London in 1863?

The Metropolitan ran gas-lit wooden carriages behind steam engines, and despite the sulphurous fumes it carried 9.5 million passengers in its first year.

About what share of the London Underground's network actually runs in tunnels?

About 45% of the network is in tunnels, because the lines climb to the surface once they leave central London for the suburbs.

As of 2023, which station is the busiest on the New York City Subway?

Times Square–42nd Street is counted together with the Port Authority station it is joined to, so riders from more than a dozen routes add up to about 54 million a year, far ahead of Grand Central.

Who refused to give up the controls after driving the first New York City Subway train on opening day in 1904?

The mayor, George McClellan, was only meant to start the train and hand over to a motorman, but he enjoyed it so much that he drove from City Hall all the way to 103rd Street.

Alfred Beach's 1870 demonstration subway, one block long under Broadway, moved its single car how?

Compressed air from a giant steam-driven blower pushed the car one block along the tunnel, then the airflow was reversed to draw it back to the line's only station.

The Paris Métro's first line opened on 19 July 1900 to coincide with what event?

The World's Fair was the spur: with it approaching, Paris started digging in 1898, and Line 1 also served the 1900 Olympic events held in the Bois de Vincennes.

Hector Guimard's cast-iron Paris Métro entrances are a landmark of which design style?

Art Nouveau began in the town houses of Brussels, but Guimard's plant-like entrances, his best-known works, put the style on the streets of Paris from 1900.

Which city's metro, opened in 1935, is famed for stations lit by chandeliers?

Moscow's stations were conceived under Stalin as 'palaces of the people', their marble, mosaics and chandeliers meant to show commuters what the Soviet system could build.

Which animal went viral in 2015 after being filmed dragging a slice of pizza down New York subway stairs?

A rat, at once nicknamed Pizza Rat, became such a star that a science magazine asked an expert why rats love pizza, and Pizza Rat costumes were on sale by Halloween.

Which city opened continental Europe's first electric underground railway in 1896, in time for a national thousandth anniversary?

Budapest ran the line under its grand Andrássy Avenue to the park where Hungary's millennium celebrations were held, and Emperor Franz Joseph opened it himself.

Which British city's subway, opened in 1896 and never extended, is a single loop of 15 stations?

Glasgow's trains were hauled round the loop by a moving cable for almost forty years, until the system was finally electrified in 1935.

New York's subway opened in 1904, but which city had opened North America's first subway tunnel seven years earlier?

Boston dug the Tremont Street tunnel to get its jammed streetcars off the surface, so the first American subway carried trolleys, not trains.

Which Underground employee designed the schematic London Tube map in 1931?

Harry Beck modelled it on the circuit diagrams of his day job, and the publicity office turned it down as too radical until a trial print run showed it was just what passengers wanted.

Which London Underground line, opened in 1979, was planned and partly built as the Fleet line?

The Jubilee line was being built as the Fleet line when it was renamed for the Silver Jubilee of 1977, then opened two years too late for the party.

The London Underground's famous 'Mind the gap' warning exists because of what feature of some stations?

Curved platforms leave a gap beside straight carriages; at Embankment an old recording by the actor Oswald Laurence was restored in 2013 so that his widow could go on hearing his voice.

In the mobile game Subway Surfers, who chases the player along the train tracks?

An inspector and his dog give chase after catching the player's character spraying graffiti on a carriage; the 2012 game went on to pass three billion downloads.

Which two teams met in the 2000 World Series, the first Subway World Series since 1956?

Yankees and Mets met in the first all-New York final since the Dodgers and Giants left for California, and the Yankees won it in five games for a third title in a row.

In which city is Arsenalna, one of the world's deepest metro stations at 105.5 metres down?

Kyiv's station is so deep because it lies inside the high bank of the Dnipro, which rises above the rest of the city; it was the world's deepest until a station in Chongqing opened in 2022.

Which city opened Latin America's first underground railway in 1913, nearly six years before Madrid's?

Buenos Aires kept the wooden carriages from opening day running on Line A for almost a century, until they were finally retired in 2013.

Africa's first metro system opened in 1987 in which city?

Cairo made its first line by joining two existing suburban railways with a new tunnel under the city centre, and it remained Africa's only full metro until Algiers opened one in 2011.

Which capital's metro is nicknamed the world's longest art gallery for the artworks in its stations?

Stockholm's first stations were built without any art at all; artists have had a hand in every new one since 1957, and the bare older platforms were decorated afterwards.

The Montreal Metro, opened in 1966, is unusual among North American systems for running on what?

Rubber tyres came from Paris: Jean Drapeau, who led Montreal, saw them on a Métro line there in 1960 and came home converted, and they let trains accelerate faster than steel wheels.

In Japan, what are the white-gloved station staff known as oshiya paid to do at rush hour?

They push commuters onto trains so the doors can shut; the first, at Tokyo's Shinjuku Station, were mostly students working part-time under the polite title 'passenger arrangement staff'.

Massimo Vignelli's 1972 New York subway map drew complaints for showing which landmark as an almost square grey box?

Central Park came out almost square and the water around the city beige, and riders complained so much that a more geographic map replaced the design in 1979, though designers still admire it.

Which US city's Metro, opened in 1976, is known for its vaulted concrete stations?

Washington got its vaults after President Johnson called for stations of real architectural merit: architect Harry Weese toured subways abroad, and a fine-arts commission insisted on the coffered ceilings.

What is the 'L' short for in the name of Chicago's rapid transit system, which began running in 1892?

Elevated: the first trains ran on a structure above the streets in 1892, and Chicago did not open a subway until 1943, when one was dug under State Street.

What does Subway say the initials of its B.M.T. sandwich stand for?

Biggest, Meatiest, Tastiest is the official line, but the sub began as a promotion named after New York's Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit lines, to fit the subway theme.

Why is the company behind Subway's US shops called Doctor's Associates Inc.?

DeLuca hoped to fund medical school with the shop's profits and his partner already held a doctorate, so they named the firm Doctor's Associates; in the end the sandwich business became his career instead.

Fans of which NBC series bought Subway footlongs on finale night in 2009 to help save it from cancellation?

Chuck had featured the chain as a sponsor, so a fan urged viewers to buy a footlong on the night of the season finale, and NBC renewed the low-rated show weeks later.

Which rival did Subway overtake at the end of 2010 to become the world's largest restaurant chain by number of outlets?

McDonald's had 1,012 fewer restaurants when the count was made, yet it stayed far ahead on money: a year earlier its sales were about three times Subway's.

In 1974, still short of their goal of 32 shops, Subway's founders turned to which way of growing the chain?

Franchising began with a friend: the founders had just 16 shops of their own in 1974, half of what they had planned, so DeLuca talked a friend into opening the first franchised one.

Which Tokyo route, opened in 1927 between Ueno and Asakusa, was the city's first subway line?

Ginza was the project of businessman Noritsugu Hayakawa, who was struck by London's underground on a study tour abroad and came home convinced Tokyo needed one; his 2.2 km line was the first subway in East Asia.

Which capital's metro, opened in 1969, gave every station its own picture symbol to guide riders unable to read?

Mexico City hired Lance Wyman, who had just designed the graphics for its 1968 Olympics, and his icons, such as a coyote for Coyoacán, made it the first metro to mark its stations by symbol and colour.

The London Underground's nickname 'the Tube' comes from what feature of its later lines?

Small, roughly circular deep tunnels were bored for the later lines, while the first ran in roofed-over trenches; the Central London Railway of 1900, with its flat twopenny fare, was soon nicknamed the Twopenny Tube.

Which New York name for the submarine sandwich is often credited, without good evidence, to a 1930s food writer?

Hero is New York's word: the tale that food writer Clementine Paddleford coined it has no good evidence behind it, and a link to the Greek gyro looks unlikely, since the name was in print before gyros caught on in America.

In 2014 Subway agreed to drop azodicarbonamide from its bread, a chemical also used to make what?

Yoga mats get their spring from the same foaming agent, which is why critics nicknamed the additive after them. A food blogger's petition drew more than 50,000 signatures before the chain gave way.

What became of more than a thousand retired New York City Redbird subway cars in the 2000s?

Sunk as artificial reefs off Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia, the stripped shells now shelter marine life and draw scuba divers. One Delaware site is named Redbird Reef.

A 2021 California lawsuit claimed which Subway sandwich filling contained none of the ingredient it is named for?

Tuna was missing altogether, said the two women who sued, citing lab tests that found only a blend of other substances made to look the part. Subway called the claim baseless.

In which 1955 comedy does a breeze from a New York subway grate lift Marilyn Monroe's white dress?

The Seven Year Itch shot the moment twice: first outside a cinema on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan, then again on a sound stage.

In which Adam Sandler comedy does the title character sign a Subway endorsement deal to save his grandmother's house?

Happy Gilmore, a failed hockey player turned golfer, takes the sandwich deal to make up for lost income. One prominent critic counted the chain among more than a dozen brands plugged in the film.

Which pitcher threw the only perfect game in World Series history during the 1956 Subway Series?

Don Larsen set down every Dodgers batter in Game 5, days after a shaky start in Game 2, and was named the Series MVP. No other pitcher has thrown a perfect game in the World Series.

Which of New York City's five boroughs is the only one not connected to the subway system?

Staten Island was meant to be joined on: a tunnel was begun in 1923 and abandoned two years later, and its finished section still lies unused beneath a Brooklyn park.

Which singer named her 1999 debut album On the 6 after the subway line she rode from the Bronx?

Jennifer Lopez took that service between her family home and work in Manhattan early in her career. The album's first single was If You Had My Love.

Which New Orleans name for a submarine-style sandwich is said to date from a 1929 streetcar strike?

Po' boy is said to come from two former conductors who fed the strikers for free and greeted each arrival as another poor boy. A local historian doubts the tale, which reached print 40 years later.

The New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn is housed inside what kind of structure?

A disused subway station called Court Street holds the collection; it carried passengers for only ten years from 1936. Film crews have gone on using it as a set since the museum moved in.

In 1984 Subway opened its first restaurant outside North America in which Gulf state?

Bahrain got its Subway in December 1984, after the chain had spent almost twenty years selling sandwiches without leaving its home continent.

Which pitcher threw a jagged piece of broken bat toward Mike Piazza in Game 2 of the 2000 Subway Series?

Roger Clemens said afterwards that he had not seen the batter running, and that he had first charged the flying shard believing it was the ball.

Which film director shot Michael Jackson's 18-minute Bad video in a Brooklyn subway station?

Martin Scorsese filmed it at Hoyt–Schermerhorn Streets station, with Wesley Snipes in one of his first screen roles. The gang dance routines were inspired in part by West Side Story.

Which volunteer patrol group did Curtis Sliwa found in 1979 to fight crime on the New York City Subway?

Guardian Angels was founded on Valentine's Day 1979 to combat violence on the trains. In 2024 its founder said the patrols would also make wellness checks on homeless people.

Which player was named MVP of the 2000 Subway Series after hitting the first pitch of Game 4 for a home run?

Derek Jeter drove that opening pitch far into the left-field bleachers at Shea Stadium, ending the momentum the home side had built the night before.

A 2017 CBC investigation in Canada reported that which Subway meat was only about half the real thing by DNA?

Chicken from two Subway items tested at roughly half the expected DNA, the rest being mostly soy. Subway disputed the finding and sued the broadcaster for $210 million.

Which swipe card replaced the token on the New York City Subway before giving way to tap-and-go OMNY?

MetroCard arrived in 1994 to spare riders the burden of carrying tokens, which the subway stopped taking in 2003. OMNY later dropped the swipe in favour of bank cards and phones.

In 2004 Subway began opening restaurants inside the stores of which American retail giant?

Walmart had long given its in-store counters to another fast-food giant, yet by 2007 Subway had more outlets inside the retailer's US stores than that rival.

Which Dodgers star stole home against Whitey Ford in Game 1 of the 1955 Subway Series?

Jackie Robinson slid home in the eighth inning to cut the Yankees' lead to 6–5. They held on to win that night, but the Dodgers went on to take the title in seven games.

Which city opened Canada's first subway line in 1954, running beneath Yonge Street from Union Station?

Toronto began with just 12 stations between Union Station and Eglinton Avenue, a stretch that now forms part of the much longer Line 1.

In the 1979 film The Warriors, a street gang must ride the New York subway home to which neighbourhood?

Coney Island is the gang's home turf, and they have to cross the whole city from the Bronx after being framed for the murder of a respected rival leader.

In 2006 a Cleveland suburb got the first Subway in the United States to follow which dietary rules?

Kosher branches dropped pork and used a soy-based cheese substitute, and at their peak there were twelve. Most later closed, partly because they could not open on Saturdays.

Which Yankees rookie wrecked his knee on an outfield drain cover during the 1951 Subway Series?

Mickey Mantle caught his spikes while chasing a fly ball hit by fellow rookie Willie Mays and had to leave the game. It was the first of the injuries that followed him through the major leagues.

Which New York subway station, the ornate showpiece of the original 1904 line, has been closed to riders since 1945?

City Hall was shut because it sat so close to the Brooklyn Bridge stop, but its brass chandeliers and skylights survive. Trains on the 6 still pass through, using its track as a turning loop.

At London's Monument station, a 'Public Subway' sign points not to the trains but to what?

A pedestrian underpass is what the word means on British streets, so the sign leads walkers beneath the road junction. North Americans use the same word for a rapid transit railway.

Subway Surfers, the endless-runner mobile game released in 2012, was created by studios based in which country?

Denmark is home to Kiloo and SYBO Games, the two private companies that built it together. Players take the role of young graffiti artists fleeing along the railway tracks.

The 1947 Subway Series between the Yankees and Dodgers was the first World Series to be what?

Televised coverage was shared between three networks: NBC showed Games 1 and 5, CBS took Games 3 and 4, and DuMont carried the other three.

Which three meats are stacked in a Subway Italian B.M.T. before any cheese, vegetables or sauce go on?

Pepperoni, salami and ham fill a sandwich whose initials began as a nod to Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit, an old New York subway operator, in keeping with the chain's name.

Which composer wrote Take the A Train, the Duke Ellington theme named after a New York subway service?

Billy Strayhorn's piece became the orchestra's signature tune because a 1940 ruling by the licensing body ASCAP made a new theme necessary.

A subway line under which Manhattan thoroughfare, first proposed in 1920, finally opened its first stations in 2017?

Second Avenue won tentative approval in 1929 at a projected cost of $98.9 million. When the first phase finally arrived, it consisted of just three stations on the Upper East Side.

All eight games of the 1921 Subway Series were played at which ballpark, then home to both clubs?

The Polo Grounds belonged to the Giants, and the Yankees had been subleasing it since 1913, so the two clubs simply took turns as the nominal home team.

Which 1997 change to the baseball schedule let New York's two clubs meet in a regular-season Subway Series?

Interleague play brought the two sides together in a competitive game for the first time on June 16, 1997. Until then the name had belonged to all-New York World Series.

Which rival sandwich chain opened in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1964, a year before the first Subway?

Blimpie was started by three former high-school classmates, who had been inspired by a successful sub shop in Point Pleasant that later grew into Jersey Mike's.

Which NBC sitcom introduced a character named Subway as a human stand-in for the sandwich chain?

Community gave the chain a campus shop, but every business there had to be majority-owned by students, so the company enrolled a human stand-in. The placement was a paid one.

Subway scrapped its Sub Club loyalty scheme in 2005 mainly because of which problem?

Counterfeit stamps were spreading through online auction sites and ever-better home printers, so the chain dropped the scheme rather than keep honouring forged cards.

Subway's 2024 Sidekicks range of long baked snacks was made with Cinnabon and which pretzel chain?

Auntie Anne's supplied the pretzel for a range that also offered a churro and a cookie, each stretched to the length of the chain's biggest sandwich.

Which name for a submarine sandwich is the common term across much of New England?

Grinder has several possible origins, and the tough-crust story is only one of them. In parts of the Northeast the word is kept for hot sandwiches such as meatball, while cold ones stay subs.

Which city's Tünel, a short funicular opened in 1875, is the world's second-oldest underground urban railway?

Istanbul inaugurated the line in January 1875, twelve years and one week after London ran the first underground passenger trains.

Which capital's metro displays ancient finds from its own excavation in stations such as Syntagma?

Athens turned the dig into rescue archaeology: artefacts uncovered while the tunnels were built are now shown in the stations themselves, alongside works of art.

At which Brooklyn ballpark did the Dodgers host their Subway Series games before the club moved to California?

Ebbets Field was one of three city ballparks joined by the trains in the 1920s, which is how an all-New York final got its name. It was demolished in 1960.

Which Dodgers catcher dropped a game-ending third strike in the 1941 Subway Series, letting the Yankees rally to win?

Mickey Owen let the ball get away with the Dodgers one strike from winning Game 4. The batter reached base, and the Yankees rallied to take the game 7–4.

Which Dodgers left-hander shut out the Yankees in the 1955 decider and won the first World Series MVP award?

Johnny Podres won the final game to bring the Dodgers their first championship, and his prize as the first Series MVP was a red two-seater Corvette.

Which Yankees star kicked the dirt in frustration after Al Gionfriddo's catch in the 1947 Subway Series?

Joe DiMaggio had driven the ball to the 415-foot marker with two men on base. Film developed later showed the catch was made several steps short of the wall, so it cost him a double or triple, not a home run.

Which Yankees manager won five straight World Series from 1949, three of them over the Dodgers?

Casey Stengel remains the only manager to lead a club to five consecutive titles. The 1949 Series was his first as a participant since 1923, when he was still a player.

Whose famous pennant-winning home run against the Dodgers sent the Giants into the 1951 Subway Series?

Bobby Thomson's drive ended a three-game playoff and became known as the Shot Heard 'Round the World. The Giants then met the Yankees, the two-time defending champions.

Before 'Subway' stuck, 1920s newspapers named an all-New York World Series after which coin, the price of a ride?

The nickel was the old fare, so papers were writing of a Nickel Series by 1927. The Subway label is on record a year later, though nobody is sure when it was first used.

Which New York subway line served Shea Stadium in Queens and wore team colours during the 2000 Subway Series?

The 7 ran in blue and orange for the occasion, while the trains heading to the rival ballpark in the Bronx were dressed in white with blue pinstripes.

Which Israeli city's Carmelit, an underground funicular, was the country's only subway-style system until 2023?

Haifa's line takes its name from Mount Carmel, the ridge it runs through, and opened in 1959.

Which private company operated New York City's first underground subway line when it opened in 1904?

Interborough Rapid Transit, the IRT, also ran older railways built above the streets, and it lasted as an operator until 1940.

Which Asian capital's metro runs more than 110 metres underground, with stations that can double as bomb shelters?

Pyongyang built its whole network without a single above-ground stretch, and blast doors stand ready in the station hallways.