Twinning
Middlesbrough gained a "twin" in 1890 when the town of Middlesboro, Kentucky was incorporated in the United States; it was named after its English namesake due to the discovery of ironstone deposits in the region.
Middlesbrough is twinned with Oberhausen in Germany, Masvingo in Zimbabwe and Dunkerque ("Dunkirk" in English) in France. This last association resulted from the Dunkirk evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force during the Second World War, in which one quarter of the ships involved were from Teesport.
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