Trivia Bits 20 June

 

 

Situated in the Limestone Coast tourism region in the south-east of South Australia, the Naracoorte Caves (pictured) are South Australia’s only World Heritage listed site officially recognised in 1994 for its extensive fossil record.

Herpetology is the branch of zoology concerned with the study of amphibians, including frogs, toads, salamanders, newts, and gymnophiona, and reptiles including snakes, lizards, amphisbaenids, turtles, terrapins, tortoises, crocodilians, and the tuataras.

Founded in 1893 by Sokrates Starynkiewicz, 19th President of Warsaw between 1875 and 1892, the Park Ujazdowski in Warsaw, Poland, features the second bridge in the world built of reinforced concrete

The characters of Homer, Marge, Lisa, and Maggie were given the same first names as Simpsons creator Matt Groening's real-life father, mother, and two sisters.

Construction started in 1768 to designs by Antonio Rinaldi, Count Orlov's Marble Palace in Saint Petersburg was decorated with 32 shades of Russian marble and currently accommodates permanent exhibitions of the Russian State Museum.

During the reign of King Prajadhipok of the Chakri dynasty, a coup on June 24, 1932 put an end to Siam's absolute monarchy, establishing a constitutional monarchy dominated by the military.

The Ninety Five Theses were written by Martin Luther who on 31 October 1517, posted the ninety-five theses, which he had composed in Latin, on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg, according to university custom and are widely regarded as the initial catalyst for the Protestant Reformation.

The architect for the west wing of the South Australian Parliament House was London-born Australian architect Edmund Wright who in 1859 was elected Mayor of the City of Adelaide.

American composer William Bergsma wrote an opera about a dog who turned into a citizen in 1920s Moscow as the result of a doctor's experiment and was based on the 1925 story Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov.

Lake Geneva runs through France and Switzerland is one of the largest lakes in Western Europe.

Quotables 20 June

 

Trivia Bits 19 June

 

 

Dutch Golden Age painter born in the Southern Netherlands, Frans Hals the Elder painted one of his best known oil paintings The Lute Player circa 1623-1624 (pictured) and which now is part of the exhibition at Musée du Louvre Paris.

The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight contains the world's oldest airworthy survivor of the Battle of Britain, alongside ten other historic aircraft - two of which fought over Normandy on D-Day and are regularly seen at British State occasions and other events.

Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades - King David, Clubs - Alexander the Great, Hearts - Charlemagne, Diamonds - Julius Caesar.

The United Nations Angola Verification Mission II was a peacekeeping mission that monitored the 1990 ceasefire and 1991 Bicesse Accords.

Government House in Perth, Western Australia is the official residence of the Governor of Western Australia and was built between 1859 and 1864 largely with convict labour.

A parkour is a sport being is a holistic training discipline using movement that developed from military obstacle course training and aim to get from A to B in the most efficient way possible using only their bodies and their surroundings to propel themselves; furthermore, they try to maintain as much momentum as is possible in a safe manner.

The instrumental Embryonic Journey composed by Jefferson Airplane / Hot Tuna guitarist Jorma Kaukonen was played at the end of the May 6, 2004 final episode of the sitcom Friends.

North Ossetia-Alania is a federal subject of Russia with its capital being the city of Vladikavkaz.

English poet, playwright, and actor William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets which cover themes such as the passage of time, love, beauty and mortality and was first published in a 1609 quarto with the full stylised title: Shake-Speares Sonnets.

The 1989 three ten-foot-high (3 m) bronze horses at the Minster Court, City of London by English sculptor Althea Wynne have been nicknamed Sterling, Dollar, and Yen.

Quotables 19 June

 

Trivia Bits 18 June

 

 

One of the oldest suspension bridges in the United States, The Brooklyn Bridge (pictured) in Manhattan crossing the East River was opened for use on May 24, 1883.

Designed by Argentine American architect César Pelli, Twin skyscrapers, Petronas Towers, are located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and were officially opened by the Prime Minister of Malaysia's Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad on 1 August 1999.

In the 1987 Welsh animated children's television series Fireman Sam, Sam has an engine named Jupiter.

Ailurophobia is the fear of cats and it is believed that Julius Caesar, Henry II, Charles XI, and Napoleon all suffered from this and would have physical reactions when in the presence of a cat.

Nutmeg, Cruyff turn and Panenka are terms in the sport of soccer.

Feminist Madeleine Pelletier (1874–1939) was the first female psychiatrist in France and who dressed as a man to protest the oppression of women.

A French pastry whose exact origin is unknown, Mille-feuille is a dessert better known in Australia as a vanilla slice

In 1935, George Gershwin selected American vaudeville performer, dancer, singer and entertainer John W. Bubbles to create the role of Sportin' Life in his opera Porgy and Bess, even though he did not read music.

Founded in 1894, the Imperial Railway Company of Ethiopia attempted unsuccessfully to build a railroad from Djibouti to Addis Ababa in 1906 but failed when political discord halted construction.

There are seven stars in the distinctive group known as The Big Dipper which also is known as the Plough or the Saptarishi or Großer Wagen (big wagon) in German.

Quotables 18 June

 

Trivia Bits 17 June

 

 

The collective noun for hippopotamus (pictured)  is a bloat.

Named after Spanish professional tennis player Rafael Nadal, 128036 Rafaelnadal is a main belt asteroid discovered in 2003 at the Observatorio Astronómico de Mallorca, just south of Costitx, Mallorca, Spain.

The Loire is the longest river in France rises in the highlands of the south-eastern quarter of the Massif Central in the Cévennes and flows 1,012 kilometres (629 mi) to the Bay of Biscay (Atlantic Ocean) at St Nazaire.

The Black September Organization is best known for its actions during the 1972 Berlin Olympic Summer Games with the group’s infamous operation killing 11 Israeli athletes, nine of whom were first taken hostage, and the killing of a German police officer.

Edgar Allan Poe introduced mystery fiction's first fictional detective, Auguste C. Dupin, in his 1841 story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."

Designed by the Mayor of Johannesburg in 1906, Johann Van Der Puf, The Coat of Arms of Mauritius features a dodo an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.

Famous for creating historical scenes, Francisco Pradilla Ortiz was a prolific Spanish painter who not only produced over 1,000 paintings but also was from 1897 briefly the director of the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

One of the 12 minor prophets of the Old Testament, Nahum, predicted the fall of Nineveh in the mid-7th century BC, several decades before the city actually fell in 612 BC.

Tegernsee Abbey in Bavaria was founded by the nobleman Otkar somewhere between 476 and 765, supposedly after his son had been killed during a game of chess by the son of King Pippin III with a chessboard.

By area, the second largest state in the United States is Texas with an area of 268,581 sq mi (696,241 kmsq) after Alaska with a total area of 663,268 sq mi (1,717,854 kmsq).

Quotables 17 June

 

Trivia Bits 16 June

 

1960 war film The Mountain Road (poster pictured) was the only war movie in which American film and stage actor James Stewart ever starred and portraying an U.S. Army Major who attempted to destroy bridges and roads potentially useful to the Japanese during World War II with the is based on 1958 Theodore H. White's novel, The Mountain Road.

The lowest non-commissioned rank in the Australian Army is Recruit (REC) who is a soldier under training who has not yet passed basic training.

Pamulaparti Venkata Narasimha Rao was an Indian lawyer and politician who served as the tenth Prime Minister of India (1991–1996) and was the first Prime Minister from outside the Nehru-Gandhi family to complete a full five year term.

The three US states of North Carolina, South Carolina and Massachusetts all have 13 letters in their names.

Operation Gibraltar was the name given to the failed plan by Pakistan to infiltrate Jammu and Kashmir, India and start a rebellion and that it eventually sparked the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.

Beth Gibbons is the lead singer of the British band Portishead, a band formed in 1991 in Bristol, England and is named after the nearby town of the same name, 8 miles west of Bristol.

Noodle Box is an Australian stir fried noodle quick service restaurant chain headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia founded by Josh James and David Milne in 1996 with outlets in all Australian states.

Written by American novelist John Irving, the 2001 novel The Fourth Hand is based on the character Patrick Wallingford, a New York television journalist, has his left hand eaten by a lion with millions of TV viewers witnessing the accident, and Patrick achieving instant notoriety as the lion guy.

Antarctica is Earth's southernmost continent, containing the geographic South Pole and does not have a flag and is a de facto condominium, governed by parties to the Antarctic Treaty System that have consulting status.

In 2002 scientists in north-east China discovered a fossilised flower that blossomed about 125 million years ago called the mother of all flowers, Archaefructus sinensis resembles the modern water lily.

Quotables 16 June

 

Trivia Bits 15 June

 

 

English author and illustrator of children's books Roger Hargreaves (pictured) wrote the Mr Men and Little Miss book series and have been part of popular culture since 1971, with sales of over 85 million copies worldwide in 20 languages.

The Italians football club Juventus shares its name with Juventas the Roman goddess for youth.

The Magarey Medal is an Australian rules football honour awarded annually since 1898 to the fairest and most brilliant player in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL), as judged by field umpires and was awarded to Alby Green from Norwood in that year.

According to the Hebrew Bible, Methuselah died at the age of 969, seven days before the beginning of the Great Flood and was the son of Enoch, the father of Lamech, and the grandfather of Noah.

The RMS Olympic and the HMHS Britannic were sister ships to the RMS Titanic and all were within the White Star Line.

Founded in 1056, Weingarten Abbey, a Benedictine monastery near Ravensburg, Germany, was once one of the richest monasteries in Southern Germany.

Footballer Antonín Panenka famously scored the winning penalty for Czechoslovakia in the 1976 European Championship final against West Germany by chipping the ball.

First described in 1886 by English surgeon Jonathan Hutchinson, Progeria is an extremely rare genetic disorder wherein symptoms resembling aspects of aging are manifested at a very early age with the word progeria deriving from the Greek words "pro" (πρό), meaning before or premature, and "gēras" (γῆρας), meaning old age.

Alligation is an old and practical method of solving arithmetic problems related to mixtures of ingredients for example in working out the total amount of sugar content in a drink made of several different drink combinations..

Winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor was Gene Hackman for his role as "Little" Bill Daggett in the 1992 American Western film Unforgiven produced and directed by Clint Eastwood.

Quotables 15 June

 

Trivia Bits 14 June

 

Australian swimmer Fanny Durack (pictured) was considered to be the world's greatest female swimmer from 1910 until 1918 and was the first Australian woman to win an Olympic gold medal in a swimming event at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.

Australian professional rugby league football coach Mal Meninga’s real first name is Malcolm.

Prominent in the late 19th century when Cobb & Co operated stagecoaches to many areas in the outback of Australia, it initially traded as The American Telegraph Line of Coaches established in 1853 by four Americans Freeman Cobb, John Murray Peck, James Swanton and John Lamber with the first coach running on January 30, 1854 from Melbourne to diggings near Castlemaine.

The Olympic competitive equestrian sport of Dressage is sometimes called horse ballet.

The 2003 novel The Five People You Meet in Heaven was written by Mitch Alborn and details the events after Eddie is killed and sent to heaven, where he encounters five people who significantly impacted him while he was alive.

The 1933 movie I'm No Angel starred Mae West as a circus lion tamer who did her own stunts including riding an elephant into the ring and putting her face between the lion's jaws.

The current state flag of South Australia featuring the defaced British Blue Ensign with the state badge of a gold disc featuring a piping shrike with its wings outstretched, is believed to have been originally designed by Robert Craig, a teacher at the School of Arts in Adelaide, and officially gazetted on 14 January 1904.

On September 23, 2013, after 150 days and 3,750 miles at sea, 28-year-old British adventurer Sarah Outen became the first woman to row solo from Japan to Alaska.

Born in Victoria in 1950, bestselling Australian author and educator John Marsden is a pioneering author of teen fiction, the founder of an alternative school called Candlebark in Romsey, Victoria Australia, and who wrote the bestselling Tomorrow, When the War Began series for teenagers about the imaginary invasion and occupation of Australia.

Alaska was the only part of continental United States that was invaded by the Japanese during WWII by attacking Aleutian Islands in 1942.

Quotables 14 June