Trivia Bits 22 October

 

 

An anti-war protest song by the German band Nena (pictured) from their 1983 self-titled album, 99 Luftballons was a one hit wonder with an English version 99 Red Balloons also released after widespread success of the original in Europe and Japan but was not a direct translation of the German and contains somewhat different lyrics.

Australia’s flag bearer was five time Olympic gold medal winner Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics or the Millennium Olympic Games/Games of the New Millennium celebrated between 15 September and 1 October 2000.

In the small South Australian port Ardrossan on Gulf St Vincent, Richard Bowyer Smith, the inventor of the stump-jump plough, opened a factory in 1880 for manufacturing the ploughs

Go ahead, make my day is a quote from the fourth Dirty Harry movie Sudden Impact released in 1983, directed by Clint Eastwood, making it the only Dirty Harry film to be directed by Eastwood himself, and starring Eastwood and Sondra Locke and was the highest grossing of the five films in the Dirty Harry franchise.

Commander Edwin Taylor Pollock became the first American governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands by beating the commander of the USS Olympia in a race to Saint Thomas in 1917.

According to the saying, Nod is the mythical land of sleep with the first recorded use of the phrase to mean "sleep" comes from Jonathan Swift in his 1737 work Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation and Gulliver's Travels.

The first Intercolonial cricket match in Australia was played in Launceston, Tasmania between players from Port Phillip and Van Diemen's Land in February 1851.

The character Tom Ripley was created by American novelist and short story writer Patricia Highsmith for five books The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley's Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water, published between 1955 and 1991 - are referred to collectively as the Ripliad.

Errhine is the name given to medicines to be snuffed up the nostrils to promote sneezing and increased discharges.

Winner of the 2005 Archibald Prize, Australian artist John Olsen, painted Salute to Five Bells, inspired by Kenneth Slessor's poem in 1972-73 and is currently hung in the Sydney Opera House.