For you veteran tifosi and Cafe-niks, this might be a thoroughly repetitive exercise, but I thought of a few aspects to Liège-Bastogne-Liège that places it in perspective.
Did you know? that Liège-Bastogne-Liège (ca. 1892) misses out by one year for the title of the world's oldest cycling event? That honor belongs to the Paris-Brest-Paris race which began in 1891, though owing to its 1200km length it stopped fitting into the modern cycling world in 1951 and is now run as a non-competitive amateur event. L-B-L is therefore the oldest professional race, just a year senior to Paris-Brussels and four years older than the Queen, Paris-Roubaix.
Did you know? that the race historically finished in Liège, on a flat run-in to the line? I can't find exactly when this change was made, but it was before 1980, as evidenced by this article on Bernard Hinault's legendary escape in a blizzard. Oh, and that for a while it was run with La Flèche Wallonnne, back-to-back, as part of an Ardennes Weekend series? Nice.
And that's about all I can drum up at the moment. Cycling history can be maddeningly hard to come by on the interwebs... Feel free to add more notes of interest.