Trivia Bits 04 May

 

• Fort Scratchy was built n 1882 to defend the New South Wales city of Newcastle against a possible Russian attack.
• The three countries bordering the landlocked Grand Duchy of Luxembourg are Belgium, France and Germany.
• From 1887 until 1999, Macau was a colony of Portugal.
• Roald Dahl was a British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter who was born in 1916 in Wales, to Norwegian parents.
• Pentecost Island, known for its land diving tribesman, belongs to Vanuatu.
• The Queen Maud Mountains are located in the continent of Antarctica. Captain Roald Amundsen in November 1911 named these mountains for the Norwegian queen Maud of Wales.
• Ashcombe Maze, traditional hedge & rose mazes, lavender gardens, is in the Australian state of Victoria in the town of Shoreham on the Mornington Peninsula.
• Monte Titano is the highest peak in the small European country of San Marino and stands at 739 m (2,425 ft) above sea level.
• The sport Uppies and Downies originated in the United Kingdom constituent country of England and is a version of Medieval football.
• The collective noun for a group of lizards is Lounge – a lounge of lizards.
• English Catholic nun Elizabeth Barton was executed for high treason in 1534 for prophesying against the marriage of King Henry VIII of England to Anne Boleyn.
• The condition piriformis syndrome affects the Sciatic Nerve causing pain, tingling and numbness in the buttocks and along the path of the sciatic nerve descending down the lower thigh and into the leg.
• Jeddah in Saudi Arabia is the largest sea port on the Red Sea and the second-largest city in Saudi Arabia after the capital city, Riyadh.
• The five major circles of latitude dividing the earth are Tropic of Capricorn, Tropic of Cancer, the equator, the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic Circle.
• A croquette is a fried food coated in breadcrumbs.
• Raisa Gorbacheva, the wife of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery, following her death in 1991, and is now Moscow’s third-most popular tourist destination.
• The world’s driest continent after Antarctica is Australia.
• In 1971, Australia signed the Five Power Defence Arrangements Treaty with New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore and the United Kingdom.
• Dolmabahçe Palace in Istanbul, Turkey was the administrative center of the Ottoman Empire from 1856 to 1922 with fourteen tonnes of gold leaf used to gild the ceilings of the 45,000 square metre monoblock palace, which stands on an area of 110,000 m².
• The largest city on Cyprus is Nicosia which located near the centre of the Mesaoria plain, on the banks of the River Pedieos and has been in continuous habitation since the beginning of the Bronze Age 2500 years BC.