We often hear tidbits of history from countries and towns far away and older than our own city, but how much do we really know about our own backyard?
Take a look at 10 historical facts every Brisbanite should know about Brisbane.
Power to the people
The first recorded use of electricity for public purposes in Australia took place in Brisbane in 1882.
Eight arc lights were lit up along Queen Street, with power supplied by a generator driven by a small engine in a foundry at Adelaide Street.
The lamps were 20 feet in height and paved the way for electric lighting to be installed and put on trial in April the following year at the Government Printing Office in William Street.
Torbreck, Highgate Hill
This Dornoch Terrace icon was the first company-titled high-rise development erected in Queensland, from 1958-1960.
The complex, designed by two Brisbane architects, was built in two stages; a low-rise Garden Block on Chermside Street and a high rise Tower Block on Dornoch Terrace.
The low-rise section was built using a lift-slab technique, where the roof and floor of units were built on the ground before being hoisted into position to connect to vertical wall supports.
This construction technique had not been applied in Queensland before.
Torbreck, Highgate Hill was the first high-rise residential development.
Nuts about Brisbane
Brisbane City Botanic Gardens is home to the world's first cultivated Macadamia nut tree, which still stands today.
It was planted in 1858 by Walter Hill, the first curator of the botanical gardens.
The seeds from which the tree was grown came from bushland near Gympie and helped kick-start Australia's first plant industry, according to the National Trust of Australia.
City Ambulance Transport Brigade
This year marks 125 years since ambulance services began at a meeting in a private residence in Dutton Park.
Seymour Warrian of the Queensland Defence Force Ambulance Corps started the idea of forming a civil ambulance service after witnessing an accident during the Brisbane Exhibition.
A horse rider had fractured his leg and was made to walk on the injury by well-meaning bystanders who guided him to a cab.
The City Ambulance Transport Brigade kicked off in September 1892 and was given a room in the Brisbane Courier building.
It transported its first patient from a Taringa residence to a private hospital in New Farm on November 5, 1892.
Ambulance officers posing on a buggy with a wheeled litter attached to it. Photo: State Library of Queensland
Aim for the stars, land on the bank
It might come as a surprise to some, but Brisbane was home to Australia's first rocket launch, albeit a failed attempt.
Queensland Air Mail Society president and founder Alan H. Young, with an ambition to modernise the postal service, dispatched a rocket filled with empty envelopes from a ship called the Canonbar from the Brisbane River in 1934.
The rocket was intended to land at Pinkenba but on leaving the ship crashed into a pile on a river bank and fell into the water.
The rocket and cargo were luckily salvaged by the Canonbar's captain who had secured a long line to the rocket.
Mt Coot-tha
Mt Coot-tha was originally known as One Tree Hill due to the single eucalyptus tree that stood out on a bare knoll on the mountain's summit.
The mountain was logged for its variety of timber trees that were used to build the surrounding settlement.
In 1874, 1500 acres of land was proclaimed a public park and six years later, the park was declared a reserve for public recreation.
View looking down on Brisbane from Mount Coot-tha in the late 1890s. Photo: State Library of Queensland
Brisbane River
John Oxley, tasked from Sydney with finding a location for a new convict settlement in 1823, stumbled across three ex-convicts who had been living with Aboriginal groups for a number of months.
Thomas Pamphlett, John Finnegan and Richard Parsons, along John Thompson who died on the voyage, set sail from Sydney to Illawara for work but a strong storm blew them off course and they became shipwrecked on the outer shore of Moreton Island.
After help from a group of Aborigines, they crossed over to the mainland and came upon the Brisbane River.
It was near the mouth of the river that the men encountered John Oxley and guided him along the river to the present site of Goodna.
The river was named after the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Thomas Brisbane.
Breakfast Creek ghost
The ghost of the original owner of the Breakfast Creek Hotel is said to haunt the establishment, with some staff reportedly seeing and hearing him regularly, according to the Breakfast Creek website.
The hotel was built in 1889 by former lord mayor of Brisbane William MacNaughton Galloway, whose initials grace the front facade.
He died in 1895 after a drunken fall from a second floor window of the hotel and reportedly his ghost now haunts the original parts of the hotel.
Flood waters at Breakfast Creek Hotel in 1893. Photo: State Library of Queensland
Brisbane Zoo
A zoo existed in the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens up until 1958 and housed a range of animals including monkeys, baboons, deer, antelope, foxes and kangaroos.
More than 400 bird species were also on display within several aviaries, however the biggest drawcard was a giant Galapagos Islands tortoise called Harriet, reportedly captured by Charles Darwin in the 1830s.
The zoo closed due to allegations of conflicts of interest, high costs and the zoo animal's poor state.
Harriet lived out the rest of her days at Australia Zoo, where she died in 2006 at the estimated age of 176.
Brisbane zoological gardens with Parliament House in the background. Photo: State Library of Queensland
Story Bridge
Brisbane's Story Bridge is the longest steel cantilever bridge in Australia and was named after public servant John Douglas Story who advocated strongly for the bridge's construction.
John Bradfield won the tender to design the bridge, which is believed to be based off the design of the Jacques Cartier Bridge in Canada.
Construction began in 1935 and opened, initially as a toll bridge, in 1940.