Photo courtesy Paul Mannix

So you know that there is a flat mountain and pretty beaches, but there is much, much more to the beautiful Mother City than that. Here are a few short, interesting facts about Cape Town to share on Twitter, among friends, or maybe at your next pub quiz, to help you sound like an authority on the matter!

• Cape Town has a population 3.7-million people

• Cape Town receives an average of 283 days of sunshine per year

• Cape Town International Airport has been voted Best Airport in Africa for the past two years – and 8-million passengers passed through it in 2011

• Cape Town's container terminal moves 700 000 containers per year

• The Table Mountain Aerial Cableway has been operating since 1929, receiving its 1-millionth visitor 1959, and its 22-millionth in 2012

• In the Jane Austen novel Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen even recommends a little Constantia for its "healing powers on a disappointed heart", in reference to the Cape wine region

• More species of plants grow on Table Mountain than in the whole of the United Kingdom

• The world’s first heart transplant was performed by Dr Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town in 1967

• Cape Town is home to the world’s largest individually timed cycle race, the Cape Argus Pick n Pay Cycle Tour

• The daily noon gun is not only Cape Town’s oldest living tradition, but the guns used (there are two, in case one fails) are two of the oldest in the world still in daily use

• Many of the houses in the Bo-Kaap area were built from the ballast that Dutch ships used on their voyages to Cape Town

• Table Mountain is the only terrestrial landmark to have an equivalent in the stars – Mensa (meaning "table"), a constellation which like the mountain even has a "tablecloth", in the form of part of the Large Magellanic Cloud

Know any other good ones? Share them below!