4711

According to legend, on 8 October 1792, a Carthusian monk made a wedding gift for the merchant Wilhelm Mülhens (1762–1841): the secret recipe of a so-called "aqua mirabilis", a "miracle water" for internal and external use.

The firm "Johann Maria Farina gegenüber dem Jülichs-Platz" feared confusion between the products because they also produced perfumes.

The offer attracted several interested parties; in December 2006, P&G announced that the brand had been sold to the perfume company Mäurer & Wirtz in Aachen, a subsidiary of the Dalli Group.

On 7 October 1794, the city council decided that every local government official had to hand in an inventory of all citizens and non-citizens in his district within 48 hours.

[3] On 20 October 1794, Senator Gottfried von Gall noted in his diary that the numbering and the written documentation of the houses which started eight days earlier was being continued.

[4] The printer Heinrich Josef Metternich (a council member) applied for permission to publish an address calendar.

[5] In the second address book of Cologne (1797), the widow of Wilhelm von Lemmen was still listed as the tenant of the Klöckergasse house, which had been given the number 4711.

In the preface to the 1813 French edition of the address book, the publisher Thiriart claimed that there had not been any house numbering before the arrival of the French in the city ("inconnu à Cologne avant l´arrivée des armées françaises au bord du Rhin") and that the order to number the houses had been given in 1795.

[11] During World War II Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine (navy) issued vast amounts of 4711 perfume to the submariners of the U-boat fleet.

[13][14] Due to the cologne's usage as a surrogate alcohol, 4711 was the original telephone number of the Finnish Poison Information Centre.