On January 10, the world celebrates World Metro Day – a transport giant that hides thousands of secrets in its underground tunnels every day. The subway is not just a way of moving, but a whole world with its own rules, legends and shocking stories. “Why does an ordinary, at first glance, underground deserve its own holiday?”, you ask. Because it is more than transport. It is a mirror of our time, a place of meetings, dramas, and even mysterious events that excite the imagination. This is the heart of big cities, which pulsates incessantly even at night. It is a place where architectural masterpieces meet engineering marvels, and underground tunnels hide stories that can surprise even the most skeptical passenger.
Incredible facts about the subway
Millions of people use the subway every day and rarely think about what is hidden behind the walls of its tunnels. The mysterious apparitions of ghost stations, underground records, unsolved criminal stories and even architectural masterpieces are all part of underground life that we often overlook. World Metro Day is a great opportunity to look deeper and find out what this hidden world is really like.
The first subway in the world was opened in London in 1863. It worked on a steam locomotive, and according to legend, the passengers of the first trains literally suffocated from the smoke in the tunnels. The English christened it the Tube (from the English tube – ed.). The idea of the first subway belonged to the lawyer Charles Pearson, who, although he himself did not manage the work of the subway, but proposed to use underground communications to deliver workers from remote areas of the city. Already in the first year of operation, 1 million people used the subway services. man, and the following year the number of passengers increased to 10 million. man.
Today it is a transport network consisting of 11 branches. But at that time it was a slow train consisting of wooden cars lit by gas burners. But even then there were three classes of carriages. First class – comfortable six-seat compartments with separate access to the platform, luxurious interior decoration, leather sofas and gas lighting. The second class is like a coupe with a modest finish. And third-class carriages for the most hardy – open cargo platforms with benches. To get into such a car, you just had to step over the side. Due to the lack of a roof, third-class passengers often arrived at their destination not very clean and with disheveled hair. But all the same, there were more workers, so it was the third class that was in demand.
The history of the subway has not been without tragic incidents. So, back in 1987 in Great Britain, someone threw a cigarette butt into the bin at the old Kines Cross station, which caused a terrible fire that killed 31 people. Since then and to this day, for safety reasons, there are no ballot boxes in the metro.
Currently, the subway covers almost all major cities of the world, transporting more than 150 million people every day. There are almost 200 active subways in the world. The newest subways opened in 2021 in China’s Luoyang and Taiwan’s Taichung. The longest subway in the world with a total length of 743 km connects different districts of Shanghai. And the shortest subway, 4 km long, is located in the Japanese town of Yokohama. Yokohama, India’s Ahmadabad and Ukraine’s Dnipro are among the subways with the least number of stations (only 6) in the world. And the record holder with the largest number of stations in the world (just imagine, 472!) is the New York subway.
There are three metro lines in Ukraine – in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Dnipro. 1.4 million people use the Kyiv metro per day. On average, since the opening day of the Kyiv metro, 17 billion people have traveled through it, and in Kharkiv – 9.5 billion.
Officially, the construction of the Kyiv metro began in 1937, but due to a number of political and local difficulties, it was constantly postponed. In the end, the official opening of five stations took place on November 12, 1960. It is worth noting that the “Arsenalna” station at that time was considered the deepest in the world (105.5 m). But in 2022, this record was broken by the Chinese station “Hungyancun” with a depth of 116 m.
On August 23, 1975, the first metro line of the modern Kholodnohirsko-Zavodska branch, which consisted of eight stations, was launched in Kharkiv. At that time, it was the sixth subway in the USSR and the second in Ukraine. At the end of the 1950s, Kharkiv had many transport routes: 33 tram lines, 36 trolleybus lines and more than 50 bus lines. The city grew, and the appearance of the subway greatly relieved ground transport. They decided to build the first metro line along Kharkiv’s busiest thoroughfare — from the west, through the center, and to the east. South Station was originally supposed to be the terminus. But the engineers decided to go further, extending the metro line towards Kholodnaya Gora and making the terminus of the first line on Sverdlova Street (now Poltava Shlyakh).
Today, the Kharkiv metro is a strategic facility, a real underground outpost. Its tunnels and stations have repeatedly served the townspeople as shelter during shelling and air raids. In the first days of the full-scale invasion, hundreds of Kharkiv residents descended on the subway, where instead of the usual rumble of trains, there were voices, the rustle of blankets and, of course, an unbreakable faith in the safety of these concrete walls. Trains and subway stations even became a long-term shelter for newborns in those terrible days.
It is impressive how quickly the subway adapted to new realities. In Kharkiv, for example, underground schools began to appear. Children who study in tunnels where only cars once hummed. This is not just a manifestation of human resilience, it is a symbol of how even in the most difficult conditions we look for ways to live, develop and build the future.
Secrets that hide in the tunnels
There is always an element of mysticism in the metro. Passengers tell of strange sounds heard in the tunnels late at night, and of people who enter the carriage and…never come out again. This is how the Kharkiv station “Maidan Konstitutsii” became famous. 20 years ago, an event took place that still makes ants run up my skin. Late in the evening, subway workers were informed that an unknown man had jumped onto the rails and disappeared into the tunnel. The metro was immediately stopped, and the police team examined the tunnel – and found nothing. When viewing the video recordings from the cameras, not a single living creature was recorded. However, a hazy substance with the outline of a person was clearly visible.
And again, an interesting fact related to the same station – if you take a picture at this station, your own aura can be reflected in the photo.
The Kyiv metro boasts 3 ghost stations. Lviv Gate, Telychka and Hertsena stations. Due to the economic crisis and lack of resources, the first and third stations were closed back in 1997. The second station was closed due to impracticality, but it continues to be looked after.
Some Kharkiv metro stations, for example, the “Sportivna” station, were even subjected to the destructive force of nature. So, almost under the “Metalist” stadium, underground water found a crack right above the escalator and constantly broke it. And the “Central Market” station was 2/3 in the water and it was built in an open way, so only half a meter separates it from the surface.
The Kharkov underground even serves as a real bunker for the leadership of the city and region, according to the stories of diggers (from the English digger – a person who travels through artificial dungeons-ed.). It is located at the metro station “Universitet” and occupies an area of 300-500 square meters. m. A passage in the building of the regional administration leads to the bunker. Also, according to legend, there is a secret room under the building of the metro management. Allegedly, this facility occupies several thousand square meters and has several floors. It houses offices for chiefs, dining rooms, rest rooms, and offices for the military, city and regional authorities. You can get there again through the administration building and through the subway.
An interesting fact is that some metro stations were also used in commercial projects. For example, thanks to the constant temperature, champignon mushrooms were grown at the Yaroslav Mudrogo metro station in Kharkiv, which is the deepest. The Metropolitan even bred river fish for a while.
Terrible finds in the subway
The world’s metros have repeatedly proven that they are not just transport arteries, but whole worlds that are hidden underground, with their secrets, legends and even terrible discoveries. For example, in London, in one of the abandoned tunnels, ancient suitcases full of letters, photographs and documents from the Second World War were found. Historians suggest that it belonged to people who hid underground during the bombings. The feeling as if time has frozen in these suitcases makes the heart sink.
But the most gruesome discovery in 2015 during the construction of a new subway line in London was the remains of several thousand people who died in 1665 during the plague epidemic. It was in this place, as it turned out later, that the Bedlam Hospital cemetery was located.
Human bones have been repeatedly found in the Paris subway. No wonder, because some tunnels pass next to the catacombs, where millions of human remains rest. They say that sometimes at night subway workers hear strange sounds – as if someone is calling them from the depths.
And in 2016, workers expanding the subway line in Los Angeles felt like real archaeologists, finding the remains of mastodons (prehistoric ancestors of elephants – ed.), which died out 10,000 years ago. In Dusseldorf, Germany, during the construction of a new subway line, a mammoth tusk over 1 meter long and weighing 34 kilograms was unearthed, which had been lying in the ground for about 10,000 years.
And the Australian metro construction workers from Melbourne generally found more than a thousand human teeth. As it turned out, they were thrown away by the 19th century dentist J. Foster.
During the construction of a new branch in Rome, the builders came across the house of a Roman military commander. The area of the old building was 300 square meters. Archaeologists discovered about a dozen rooms, a courtyard with a fountain. The mosaics, frescoes and marble floor have been preserved in good condition.
In the subway of New York, a real treasure was once discovered – a bag with antique jewelry, which someone lost back in the 1930s. The owner was never found, and the valuables are now kept in the city museum.
The underground often becomes a shelter for homeless people. In the Tokyo subway, they once found a whole room furnished for living, with furniture, a lamp and even a TV. It turned out to be a temporary shelter for a man who lost everything and found salvation underground.
In addition, mysterious devices were found in the tunnels of the Stockholm subway, which were probably used during the Cold War. Engineers still cannot understand their purpose, but there is an assumption that they were spy machines.
So, the subway is not only an engineering triumph, but a multifaceted phenomenon. It unites cities and generations, intertwines technology and art, becoming a symbol of modern urban life. The underground is a witness to the history of its time: from the first steam trains to stations that amaze with architectural perfection, from hectic rush hours to mystical legends about ghost stations. So the next time you go down into the dungeon, listen to its sounds, look at its details and think about how many more secrets it hides. Perhaps you will witness a new story that will add to its mysterious treasury.
