Monday, November 30, 2015

Trivia Bits 30 November

 

Woodstock Festival

Billed as An Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music (poster pictured), The Woodstock Festival held near the town of Bethel, New York, from August 15 to 18, 1969.

Norwegian painter Mathias Stoltenberg, who died in poverty in 1871, was rediscovered following the 1914 Jubilee Exhibition in Kristiania, Oslo, and marked the centennial anniversary of the 1814 constitution and focused on industry and agriculture.

The Gothic-style Washington National Cathedral contains the remains of the only US president buried in Washington: Woodrow Wilson whilst William Howard Taft and John F. Kennedy are buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, VA.

The word tip dates back to the old London coffeehouses where conspicuously placed brass boxes etched with the inscription To Insure Promptness encouraged customers to pay for efficient service with the resulting acronym, TIP, becoming a byword.

Beginning in 1973 as an event to test the best sled dog mushers and teams but evolving into the highly competitive Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race which is an annual long-distance sled dog race run in early March from Anchorage to Nome and is officially set at 1,049 miles (1688 km), which honours Alaska's status as the 49th U.S. state.

The French word détente is used to describe the easing of strained relations, especially in a political situation.

World Asteroid Day is held on June 30 the day in 1908 when a 50 metre asteroid or comet crashed into Tunguska, Siberia with the explosion recorded to have knocked down trees and the shock waves caused were measured as far away as England.

Formicidae is the scientific name for ants that form colonies that range in size from a few dozen predatory individuals living in small natural cavities to highly organised colonies that may occupy large territories and consist of millions of individuals.

Mossman is a town on the Mossman River in Far North Queensland, Australia, which hosts the Bally Hooley Rail Tour tourist attraction where tourists from nearby Port Douglas can take an open carriage steam train to the town’s sugar mills.

Cable-stayed 5.4km bridge, the Suramadu Bridge, connecting the islands of Java and Madura, became the longest bridge in Indonesia after opening in June 2009.

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