Trivia Bits 18 July

 

According to legend, the Teufelstritt (Devil's Footstep), in the Munich Frauenkirche in Munich, Germany (pictured), marks the spot where the devil stood when he thought that the builder had constructed a cathedral with no windows.

In 1809, it is said that Cornish chemist and inventor Humphry Davy actually invented the first electric light connecting two wires to a battery and attached a charcoal strip between the other ends of the wires; the charged carbon glowed, making the first arc lamp.

Victory in Europe Day, generally known as VE Day, was the public holiday celebrated on 8 May 1945 to mark the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces.

Adwaita, the reportedly 255-year-old Aldabra Giant Tortoise that died in 2006 in Kolkata zoo India, was a pet of Robert Clive, the Commander-in-Chief, India of British East India Company.

A Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar, an American military transport aircraft, was used in the 2004 movie The Flight of the Phoenix based on the 1964 novel by Elleston Trevor.

Charles Knight’s The Penny Magazine (1832–1845) had the main purpose to educate and improve England’s poor, but was very popular with Americans and became a very successful magazine as it attained a circulation of more than 20,000 within a year.

On the morning of September 3, 1833, a paper, the Sun, printed on four letter-size pages and filled with human-interest stories and short police reports appeared on the streets of New York published by a young printer named Benjamin Day, and selling for one penny becoming known as the penny papers which, within two years, was selling 15,000 copies a day.

First performed at the court of Palace of the Archbishop, Salzburg, 1 May 1769, La finta semplice (The Pretended Simpleton), K. 51 (46a) is an opera buffa in three acts for soloists and orchestra, composed in 1769 by then 12-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by the court poet Marco Coltellini.

Fala, Franklin D. Roosevelt's beloved Scottish terrier and one of the most famous presidential pets, has a bronze statue in his likeness at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington D.C.

In the Australian Parliamentary House of Representatives, Members of the governing party or parties sit on the right of the Speaker’s Chair and the Members of the Opposition on the left. The two chairs on the right of the Table are, by practice, reserved for the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister with the front benches reserved for Ministers.