Baghdad vs Harrisburg

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Baghdad (; Arabic: بَغْدَاد‎ [baɣˈdaːd] (listen)) is the capital of Iraq and one of the largest cities in the Arab world. Located along the Tigris, near the ruins of the Akkadian city of Babylon and the ancient Iranian capital of Ctesiphon, Baghdad was founded in the 8th century and became the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate. Within a short time, Baghdad evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center of the Muslim world. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as hosting a multiethnic and multireligious environment, garnered the city a worldwide reputation as the "Centre of Learning". Baghdad was the largest city in the world for much of the Abbasid era during the Islamic Golden Age, peaking at a population of more than a million. The city was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through many centuries due to frequent plagues and multiple successive empires.

With the recognition of Iraq as an independent state (formerly the British Mandate of Mesopotamia) in 1932, Baghdad gradually regained some of its former prominence as a significant center of Arabic culture, with a population variously estimated at 6 or over 7 million.In contemporary times, the city has often faced severe infrastructural damage, most recently due to the United States-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the subsequent Iraq War that lasted until December 2011. In recent years, the city has been frequently subjected to insurgent attacks, resulting in a substantial loss of cultural heritage and historical artifacts as well. As of 2018, Baghdad was listed as one of the least hospitable places to live, ranked by Mercer as the world's worst major city for quality of life.

Source: Wikipedia

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Harrisburg ( HARR-iss-burg; Pennsylvania German: Harrisbarrig) is the capital city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, and the county seat of Dauphin County. With a population of 49,271, it is the 13th largest city in the Commonwealth. According to 2018 estimates of the Census Bureau, the population is 51.8% Black or African American, 22.6% White, 21.8% Latino, 5.4% Asian, and 0.4% Native American while 3.9% identify as two or more races. It lies on the east bank of the Susquehanna River, 107 miles (172 km) west of Philadelphia. Harrisburg is the anchor of the Harrisburg metropolitan area, which had a 2019 estimated population of 577,941, making it the fourth most populous metropolitan area in Pennsylvania and 96th most populous in the United States. It is the second-largest city in the multi-polar region known as the Lower Susquehanna Valley, comprising the Harrisburg, Lancaster and York metropolitan areas. Harrisburg played a notable role in American history during the Westward Migration, the American Civil War and the Industrial Revolution. During part of the 19th century, the building of the Pennsylvania Canal, and later the Pennsylvania Railroad, allowed Harrisburg to become one of the most industrialized cities in the Northeastern United States. The U.S. Navy ship USS Harrisburg, which served from 1918 to 1919 at the end of World War I, was named in honor of the city.

In the mid-to-late 20th century, the city's economic fortunes fluctuated with its major industries consisting of government, heavy manufacturing, agriculture, and food services (nearby Hershey is home of the chocolate maker, located just 10 miles (16 km) east). The Pennsylvania Farm Show, the largest free indoor agriculture exposition in the United States, was first held in Harrisburg in 1917 and has been held there every early-to-mid January since then. Harrisburg also hosts an annual outdoor sports show, the largest of its kind in North America, an auto show, which features a large static display of new as well as classic cars and is renowned nationwide, and Motorama, a two-day event consisting of a car show, motocross racing, remote control car racing, and more. Harrisburg is also known for the Three Mile Island accident, which occurred on March 28, 1979, near Middletown. In 2010 Forbes rated Harrisburg as the second best place in the U.S. to raise a family. Despite the city's recent financial troubles, in 2010 The Daily Beast website ranked 20 metropolitan areas across the country as being recession-proof, and the Harrisburg region landed at No. 7. The financial stability of the region is in part due to the high concentration of state and federal government agencies.

Source: Wikipedia