Saturday, January 25, 2014
Trivia Bits 25 January
- In the US, if the President and Vice-President can no longer serve, then The Speaker of the House assumes the Presidency.
- Chiefly due to the influence of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula as well as its later film adaptations and extensions, Transylvania, although in the English-speaking world it has been strongly associated with vampires, is a historical region in the central part of Romania bounded by the Carpathian mountain range.
- TV series The Closer stars Kyra Sedgwick as Brenda Leigh Johnson.
- Australian tennis champion, John Newcombe, won the Australian Open singles title twice – in 1973 and 1975. Overall, he won 26 Grand Slam titles in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles.
- The precious mineral, diamonds, are found in igneous rocks known as kimberlites named after the town of Kimberley in South Africa, where the discovery of an 83.5-carat (16.7 g) diamond in 1871 spawned a diamond rush.
- Morticia in the 1991 movie The Adams Family was played by Anjelica Huston who is daughter of director John Huston, and granddaughter of actor Walter Huston.
- St. Swithun's Way, a 34-mile (55 km) long-distance footpath in England from Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire to Farnham, Surrey, was opened by Hampshire County Council in 2002 to mark the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II.
- Osteogenesis imperfect is better known as Brittle Bone Disease, a congenital bone disorder.
- Lederhosen are breeches made of leather and may be either short or knee-length and were traditionally worn in Germany.
- In 2012, Joyce Banda became the first female president of Malawi, a landlocked country in southeast Africa that was formerly known as Nyasaland.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Trivia Bits 24 January
- Australia’s nearest port to Asia is Port Darwin.
- Goodpasture’s syndrome effects the lungs and kidneys being first reported by the American pathologist Ernest Goodpasture of Vanderbilt University, in 1919.
- The Bangka-Belitung Islands is a province of Indonesia, lies off Sumatra and has a capital of Pangkal Pinang.
- Although Wellek and Warren's Theory of Literature was imprinted with three copyright dates of 1942, 1946 and 1949, none of which were the year it was published by Harcourt, Brace, and Company of December 1948.
- Kathryn Bigelow won the Best Director Oscar for the 2008 movie The Hurt Locker and starred Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, and Brian Geraghty.
- The Champaner-Pavagadh Archaeological Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in Gujarat, India, contains dozens of monuments, including the Bawaman, Jama, Kevada, Lila Gumbaj, and Nagina mosques, as well as the Kalika Mata Temple atop Pavagadh Hill.
- Short lived 2010 TV series The Gates, an American supernatural crime drama, centred on Nick Monohan and his family and was cancelled after its first season due to low ratings.
- The common chiffchaff is a migratory bird which breeds in open woodlands throughout northern and temperate Europe and Asia.
- Santorini, Andros and Mykonos are part of the Cyclades group of islands situated in the Aegean Sea.
- American cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman's 1959 Jungle Book was the first book-length work of original comics in the United States with the satirical stories aimed at an adult audience. The alternative full title was Up from the Apes! (and Right Back Down)—In Which Are Described in Words and Pictures Businessmen, Private Eyes, Cowboys, and Other Heroes All Exhibiting the Progress of Man from the Darkness of the Cave into the Light of Civilization by Means of Television, Wide Screen Movies, the Stone Axe, and Other Useful Arts.
- Canadian author Alice Munro was awarded the 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Trivia Bits 23 January
- A formicarium or ant farm is a vivarium which is designed primarily for the study of ant colonies and how ants behave and those who study ant behaviour are known as myrmecologists.
- The song Travelin’ Soldier was 2003 hit for The Dixie Chicks from their album Home and was written and originally recorded by American country music artist Bruce Robison in 1996.
- Australian former World No. 1 tennis player Pat Rafter won the US Open twice in 1997 and 1998.
- On 21 October 1978, the unexplained disappearance of 20-year-old Frederick Valentich while piloting a Cessna 182L light aircraft occurred over Bass Strait between the Australian states of Victoria and Tasmania.
- The Haugh unit is related to protein in an egg and introduced by Raymond Haugh in 1937 and is an important industry measure of egg quality next to other measures such as shell thickness and strength.
- The 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson was written by Johan David Wyss.
- The statue of Sherlock Holmes sculpted by John Doubleday, stands near the site of the fictional detective's home at 221B Baker Street in London and was unveiled on 23 September 1999 being funded by the Abbey National building society.
- Yaounde is the capital of the country in the west Central Africa region of Cameroon of which French and English are the official languages.
- Fee-fi-fo-fum! I smell the blood of an Englishman is a line from the fairy tale Jack and the Beanstalk with the earliest known appearance in print is Benjamin Tabart's moralised version of 1807.
- In 2007, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner became the first elected female President of the South American country of Argentina.
