Trivia Bits 22 January

 

• South-Eastern African country of Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in 1975 and has the currency of Mozambican metical (MZN).
• Denver, the capital of the U.S. state of Colorado, has the nickname of The Mile High City.
• The firebombing of Dresden is a central event in US author Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five published in 1969 and is about the World War II experiences and journeys through time of a soldier named Billy Pilgrim.
• Another name for the Lotus seed is Bean of India and is an aquatic flower native to tropical Asia and Queensland, Australia.
• Australian golfer Jan Stephenson won the US Women’s Open Golf Championship in 1983.
• The Flat Bastion Magazine in Gibraltar, built by the British in the 19th century to store gunpowder, is now used as a geological research facility and exhibition centre.
• Until 1972, the island nation of Sri Lanka was known as Ceylon and is now a republic and a unitary state governed by a presidential system.
• Necker Island, a 74-acre (300,000 m2) island in the British Virgin Islands just north of Virgin Gorda, was bought by Sir Richard Branson in 1978 with the entire island now operating like a resort accommodating up to 28 guests.
• The 2013 book An Average Joe: My Horribly Abnormal Life was authored by Joe Hildebrand, a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
• The brothers from the US Grammy award winning rock group Kings of Leon are Caleb, Nathan, Jared and Matthew Followill and formed in Nashville, Tennessee in 1999.