Trivia Bits 03 November

 

 

Sturt’s Desert Rose (pictured) is the floral emblem of the Northern Territory in Australia and appears in stylised form on the official flag with seven rather than five petals.

Australian writer, teacher and historian, Niall Brennan wrote the biographies of Irish-born Australian Catholic bishop Archbishop Daniel Mannix (1964) and Australian businessman and underworld figure John Wren (1971).

Chicago gangster Al Capone, leader of the South Side Italian gang, was the man behind the 1929 St Valentine’s Day massacre of seven mob associates of the North Side Irish gang led by Bugs Moran during the Prohibition Era.

The number of musical instruments accompanying an a capella piece of music is none as a capella is specifically group or solo singing without instrumental accompaniment, or a piece intended to be performed in this way contrasting with cantata, which is accompanied singing.

Wilson Peak in Colorado has been used in numerous US national and local advertising campaigns because of its charismatic and characteristically rugged mountain appearance.

With her feast day on July 22, Mary Magdalene discovered that Jesus tomb was empty and is considered to be a saint by the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican and Lutheran churches and other Protestant churches honour her as a heroine in the faith.

Appearing to have been written in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s, What Pet Should I Get? is an illustrated, rhyming children’s book in the tradition of Green Eggs and Ham by Theodor Geisel aka Dr Seuss and is the first book by the German American author to be published since his death in 1991.

First reported by Polish astronomer Kazimierz Kordylewski in the 1960s, Kordylewski clouds are large concentrations of dust that orbit Earth at the distance of the Moon.

José Plácido Domingo Embil, known as Plácido Domingo, was born in Madrid in 1941, studied piano at the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City and made his opera debut performing in Manuel Fernández Caballero's zarzuela, Gigantes y cabezudos, singing a baritone role.

The yo-yo was introduced to the US in 1929 by Donald F. Duncan and was based on a weapon used by 16th-century Filipino hunters.