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1
...that the
Eastgate Clock (
pictured ) in
Chester is the second most photographed
timepiece in the
United Kingdom , after
Big Ben ?
...that the location of
tropical cyclone formations are traditionally divided into seven
basins ?
...that
Hernando Arias de Saavedra was the first native-born governor of a
New World colony and issued the order leading to the modern-day partition of
Argentina and
Paraguay ?
...that
Kavirajamarga , the earliest
extant literary work in the
Kannada language , was written by King
Amoghavarsha I who was a famous
poet and a
scholar ?
...that many
Australian wool, dairy, and wheat towns were created overnight when
demobilized
WWI and
WWII soldiers accepted
Crown land in otherwise uninhabited rural locations?
...that the
Life Assurance Act 1774 , still in force in
Britain today, closed a legal loophole which had allowed
life insurance policies to be used as a form of
gambling ?
...that the
Spartan Cruiser (
pictured ) was originally designed as
mail plane and even flew a test flight to
Karachi as such, but was then transformed into a
passenger airplane in
1932 ?
...that
Stefan Báthory assisted
Vlad Dracula to reclaim the throne of
Wallachia in 1476?
...that when it was shown at the
Metropolitan Opera ,
Diana von Solange by
Ernst II of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was so poorly received that three hundred people signed a
petition demanding that it be removed from the repertory?
...that
Beata Brookes ,
Conservative
MEP for
North Wales for ten years, has been nicknamed "the Celtic Iron Lady"?
...that the actions of Captain
Alfred C. Haynes and the crew of
United Airlines Flight 232 are often cited as an exemplar of good
airmanship ?
...that the 22
Bodmer Papyri from a fifth-century Egyptian monastic library near
Nag Hammadi contain three plays by
Menander and fragments of the
Iliad , as well as early versions of the
Gospel of Luke and
Gospel of John ?
...that the
Red and Green Kangaroo Paw (
pictured ) is the
floral emblem of the state of
Western Australia ?
...that The Christian by
Hall Caine (published 1897) was the first novel in
Britain to sell over a million copies?
...that
British
Conservative
MP
Norman Miscampbell turned down
knighthood because he thought it would prevent him enjoying his retirement from politics?
...that the former
KGB agent
Yuri Nosenko was incarcerated for five years by the
CIA including 1,277 days of interrogation, because the
American agents did not believe he had truly
defected ?
...that
Leon Wasilewski , first
Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs , was one of the chief supporters of the
Prometheism policy aimed at breaking up the
Soviet Union ?
...that Baroness
Sophie Buxhoeveden wrote three biographies about the
Russian imperial family and about her own escape from
Russia in 1917?
...that in
1952 the
Russian mathematician
Veniamin Kagan (
pictured ) resigned from his post at
Moscow State University partly as a result of
anti-Semitic practices there?
...that, when first built, the
Chicago Board of Trade Building became the second structure located at 141 West Jackson Boulevard to bear, for a time, the title of tallest building in
Chicago ?
...that just 51 days after
Adam Air 's loss of
Flight 574 , Adam Air
Flight 172 snapped in half after a hard landing, but there were no casualties?
...that
George Cecil Ives created the
Order of Chaeronea , a secret society to promote gay rights, and left 122 volumes of diaries and 45 of scrapbooks?
...that approximately 300 pieces of
mail a day are still being sent to
10048 , the
ZIP code assigned to the former
World Trade Center complex?
...that the legend of the smuggler
Cruel Coppinger was embellished by Reverend
Robert Stephen Hawker when he published it in 1866?
...that the proposals for a new
Crimean flag after the
collapse of the Soviet Union included a white flag with seven rainbow colors at the top and a blue-white-red tricolor design (
pictured ) , which was officially adopted in
1999 ?
...that the
fast bowling during
West Indies '
tour to England in 1984 was so hostile that
England
Test
cricketer
Andy Lloyd was struck on the head and hospitalised, despite wearing a
helmet , and
Paul Terry 's arm was broken?
...that
Tropical Depression One in
June 1992 produced
100-year floods in portions of southwestern
Florida ?
...that
Romanian politician
Teohari Georgescu was dismissed from his post as
Interior Minister after being simultaneously accused of left-wing and right-wing
deviationism ?
...that the fourth
Nordic Football Championship tournament was started in
1937 but did not end until eleven years later as it was interrupted by the
Second World War ?
...that
Jennifer Pike was the youngest person to ever win the
BBC Young Musician of the Year award, at twelve years of age?
...that a
Drascombe (
Drascombe Dabber pictured ) is a class of small
sailing boats designed by John Watkinson?
...that
Air Marshal Sir
Richard Gordon Wakeford flew
Catalina
flying boats in the
Second World War , and was involved in the last sinking of a German
U-boat on
8 May
1945 ?
...that the
National Language Authority in
Pakistan is the first
autonomous
regulatory
institution to have internationally standardized the
Urdu language code table and
Urdu keyboard for
typewriters ,
teleprinters , and
computer software ?
...that in the
Lithuanian calendar , three months are named for birds and two for trees?
...that
Winnie Winkle by
Martin Branner was, in 1920, the first American comic strip to have a working woman as the main character?
...that the
Volga Tatars believed that the
Volga Bulgarian medieval city of
Aşlı was founded there by
Alexander the Great ?
...that
Louis IX of France resided in the
walled city of
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne (
pictured ) before departing on the
Eighth Crusade , during which he died in
1270 near
Tunis ?
...that
A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant had its name changed due to
threats of litigation from the
Church of Scientology ?
...that the official recognition of the
Eastern Orthodox Church in
Transylvania in the late 18th century was the result of the activity of an
Orthodox monk who was canonized two centuries later as Saint
Sofronie of Cioara ?
...that the
Ludlow Amendment was a proposed amendment to the
United States Constitution requiring a
national referendum for
declaration of war ?
...that despite using sharp
needles ,
bird control spikes do not harm the animals, and are recommended by the
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds ?
...that
Jim Zumbo was forced out of a 30-year career at
Outdoor Life magazine, had his television show pulled from the air, and was dropped from sponsorship by companies including
Remington and
Cabelas due to a single
blog post?
...that
Kanawha (
pictured ) was a steam-powered luxury
yacht aboard which industrialist
Henry H. Rogers met
Booker T. Washington to
secretly fund the education of
African Americans ?
...that the
Haitian
palm ,
Attalea crassispatha , is
so rare that there were only 25 of them left in 1991?
...that
Belarusian political authorities denounced
Mitrofan Dovnar-Zapol'skiy 's book History of Belarus in 1926 as a "Cathechesis of Belarusian National Democratism", banned it and confiscated its manuscript?
...that
British
Member of Parliament
George Chetwynd seconded a
Private Member's Bill to ban toy weapons because he believed they were an incentive to acquire a "gangster mentality"?
...that
Gurmeet Singh Dhinsa committed
murder ,
kidnapping ,
racketeering , and
tax evasion during the 1990s, all in an attempt to establish a chain of
gas stations in
New York City ?
...that one of the statues at the erotic temple
Candi Sukuh (
pictured ) in
Java ,
Indonesia , is a 1.82 m (6 feet) standing
phallus with four
balls placed below the
tip ?
...that
Derek Gardner became a leading
British
painter of marine subjects after retiring from a
civil engineering career due to
deafness ?
...that
Kobe Bryant 's agent,
Rob Pelinka , was the only person to play in the
NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship for both the
1989 champion
Michigan and for both of the
1992 and
1993 runners-up known as the
Fab Five teams?
...that
Fort William College , set up for the training of
British officials, fostered the development of
Indian languages ?
...that the lower
species diversity among certain
mammals of New England compared to
mammals of the
American West is thought to be due to fewer
glacial
refugia in the
Eastern United States ?
...that according to legend,
Joseph Stalin 's remained in
Moscow during
World War II partly due to a
prophecy from
Matryona Nikonova , whom he covertly visited while she was hiding from his government?