Trivia Bits 21 July

 

The Chislehurst Caves of Kent are actually mines that were first worked in 1250 and are 22 miles (35 km) long series of tunnels in Chislehurst, in the south eastern suburbs of London.

Australian painter Jeffrey Smart initially wanted to become an architect instead of an artist and was known for his precisionist depictions of urban landscapes with his autobiography, Not Quite Straight, published in 1996.

Rhodesian-born pilot Ernest Melville Guest was part of the RAF escort that flew with HMS Hereward taking the Dutch Royal Family to safety in England during World War Two.

Saskatchewan is a province of the country of Canada.

In 1968, Swedish pentathlete Hans-Gunnar Liljenwall became the first Olympian disqualified for drug use, for drinking two beers during the Summer Olympics held in Mexico City.

The collections of the Chicago Public Library began with the 8,000-volume "English Book Donation" which came in response to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871with donors including Queen Victoria, Benjamin Disraeli, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, John Stuart Mill, John Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold.

The 2001 novel Dirt Music was written by Tim Winton - an Australian novelist and short story writer.

Imari porcelain is Japanese porcelain wares made in the town of Arita, in the former Hizen Province, northwestern Kyūshū and were exported to Europe extensively from the port of Imari, Saga, between the second half of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century.

Marilyn Monroe married baseball player Joe DiMaggio in 1954.

Residents of the old soldiers' home known as Royal Hospital Chelsea, a retirement home and nursing home for some 300 British soldiers who are unfit for further duty due to injury or old age, are called Chelsea pensioners.

The Crested Chameleon can be found over 1,000,000 square kilometres (390,000 sq mi) in Africa

Italian physicist and founder of the Electromagnetic Wave Research Institute Nello Carrara coined the term "microwave". He coined the word in his paper on "The Detection of Microwaves" in 1932.