Manchester

Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of over 589,000 in 2024. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The two cities and the surrounding towns form one of the United Kingdom's most populous conurbations, the Greater Manchester Built-up Area, which has a population of 2.87million.

The history of Manchester began with the civilian settlement associated with the Roman fort (''castra'') of ''Mamucium'' or ''Mancunium'', established in about AD 79 on a sandstone bluff near the confluence of the rivers Medlock and Irwell. Historically part of Lancashire, areas of Cheshire south of the River Mersey were incorporated into Manchester in the 20th century, including Wythenshawe in 1931. Throughout the Middle Ages Manchester remained a manorial township, but began to expand significantly around the turn of the 19th century. Manchester's unplanned urbanisation was brought on by a boom in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, and resulted in it becoming the world's first industrialised city. Manchester attained city status in 1853. The Manchester Ship Canal opened in 1894, creating the Port of Manchester and linking the city to the Irish Sea, to the west. Its fortune declined after the Second World War, owing to deindustrialisation, and the IRA bombing in 1996 led to extensive investment and regeneration. Following considerable redevelopment, Manchester was the host city for the 2002 Commonwealth Games.

The city is notable for its architecture, its musical exports, its links to media, its links to scientific and engineering, its various sports clubs and its transport connections. The world's first inter-city passenger railway station was Manchester Liverpool Road; it was at the University of Manchester that Ernest Rutherford first split the atom; Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn and Geoff Tootill developed the world's first stored-program computer in 1948; and Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov isolated the first graphene in 2004. Provided by Wikipedia