The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: January twenty-sixth, with a few world capitals you never learned in school.

London, Rome, Tokyo; these international capitals are known to school children and veteran travelers. But how many people can name the world's accordion capital, Castelfidano, Italy? What about the barbed wire capital? That's Dekalb, Illinois. The process by which political capitals are chosen is murky enough, but how did Gulfport, Mississippi earn the distinction of being the world's root beer capital?

In reality, the practice of conferring a world title on a place is fairly simple. The honor may be bestowed by the local chamber of commerce looking for a marketable angle, or a writer searching for a convenient shorthand to describe a place's major product or particular attraction. Thus Owensboro, Kentucky has claimed the mantle of being world's barbecued mutton capital.

One very unofficial tally had little trouble identifying more than 500 different world capitals of whatever. Sometimes, the title comes with some humor, such as Sheboygan, Wisconsin which has labeled itself the world's wurst city. Sometimes, the title comes with considerable controversy. Weatherford, Texas; Rush Springs, Oklahoma; and Hope, Arkansas, for example, all claim to be the world's watermelon capital, though the latter may be changing its tune, now that its most illustrious native son has been President for the past eight years.

But New York City clearly ranks as the world's world-capital capital, with at least 30 separate titles, assuming that Wall Street still counts as the world capital of capital.

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