Tatsachen ueber Bethlehem

So Bethlehem is not the birthplace of Jesus - at least here in Pennsylvania.

But....

On Christmas Eve in 1741, Nicolaus Ludwig Zinzendorf of Saxony, Germany, leading a small group of Moravians, founded the city of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.....

The Bethlehem Steel Corporation, founded in 1904, began producing the first wide-flange structural shapes to be made in America, was the first company to produce the now-ubiquitous 'I-beam', and was a major supplier of armor plate and ordnance products during World War I and World War II. After roughly 140 years of metal production at its Bethlehem plant, Bethlehem Steel ceased operations in Bethlehem in 1995.

Bethlehem lies in the center the Lehigh Valley...home to more than 650,000 people...making it Pennsylvania's third-largest metropolitan area.

In July 2006, Money magazine included Bethlehem as one of its "Top 100 Places to Live."

As of the census^GR2 of 2000, there were 71,329 people...residing in the city...81.85% White...26.6% from 25 to 44...11.1% of families and 15.0% of the population...below the poverty line.

The median age was 36 years...For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.6 males.

The median income for a household in the city was $35,815, and the median income for a family was $45,354.

The current mayor of Bethlehem is John B. Callahan, who was elected to his 2nd term in November of 2005. His election marks the 10th year that a Democrat has sat in the mayor's office in Bethlehem.

Notable people from Bethlehem:

Michael Andretti, professional racing team owner, former professional race car driver.
Dwayne Johnson ("The Rock"), professional wrestler and actor.
Jonathan Taylor Thomas, actor

If that's not enough info for you:

The Moravians were some of the earliest Protestants, rebelling against the authority of Rome more than a hundred years before Martin Luther...

The movement which would develop into the Moravian Church was started by a priest named Jan Hus in the late fourteenth century. Hus, sensitive of the [catholic] church's misconducts, wanted to return the practices of the church to the allegedly "purer" practices of early Christianity: liturgy in the language of the people, having lay people receive communion in both kinds (bread and wine), and eliminating indulgences and the idea of purgatory.

Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf was a nobleman born in 1700 in Dresden, Saxony, in the east of modern-day Germany...Out of a personal commitment to helping the poor and needy, Zinzendorf agreed to a request from an itinerant carpenter named Christian David that persecuted Protestants from Moravia should be allowed to settle on his lands.

In 1722 the refugees established a new village called Herrnhut...and became the centre of a major movement for Christian renewal and mission during the 18th century. Moravian historians identify the main achievements of this period as:

1) Setting a up a watch of continuous prayer which ran uninterrupted, 24 hours a day, for 100 years.

2) The origination of the Losungen, the "Daily Watchwords," on 3 May 1728, published today in 50 languages, the oldest and most widely read daily devotional work in the world.

3) The establishment of over 30 settlements globally on the Herrnhut model, which emphasised a lifestyle of prayer and worship and a form of communal living in which personal property was still held but simplicity of lifestyle and generosity with wealth were considered important spiritual attributes.

4) The sending out of hundreds of Christian missionaries to many parts of the world including the Caribbean, North and South America, the Arctic, Africa, and the Far East. The Moravian missionaries were the first large scale Protestant missionary movement.

The original unsuccessful attempt to found a Moravian community in North America was in Georgia; the Moravians later found a home in Pennsylvania, where the charter of the colony provided religious freedom. The towns of Bethlehem, Nazareth, Emmaus, and Lititz, Pennsylvania were founded as Moravian communities.

Presently, the highest concentrations of Moravians [in the USA] exist in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania...The largest concentration of Moravians today is in Tanzania.

The motto of the Moravian church is "In essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; and in all things, love"

source: Wikipeida (the best damn encyclopedia in the world!)

So, in summary, I live in the Salt Lake City of the East which is one of the top 100 places to live with poor people (15% below the poverty line!) and tons of women. Come visit!