The first production of crystal in Waterford, Ireland, was in 1783, when a company called the Waterford Glassworks was founded by George Penrose and his nephew William Penrose. Their product became famous worldwide, but the company folded in 1851. It wasn’t until 1947 that glass production began again in Waterford.
We know crystal is leaded glass, but how much is lead? To be considered lead crystal, the glass must contain at least 24% lead oxide (PbO)
((Fun fact: placing a Waterford crystal bowl in your carry-on luggage leaves a very noticeable dark image on the luggage x-ray machine at the airport, and some very long looks from airport security as they carefully examine your bag. 
))
In play: The chemical symbol for the element of lead, Pb, comes from the Latin word for the metal, plumbum.
The term plumbing comes from the Latin word for lead, plumbum. The Romans started using lead for water pipes around 200 BCE because it was malleable and easy to beat into sheets and form into pipes. They were aware of adverse health effects; Vitruvius wrote in the 1st Century that lead water pipes should be avoided.
Pencil lead is a type of graphite the Romans called plumbago, which means ‘acts for lead’. The name stuck, even though the two materials are different.
One of the questions in the beloved episode of Friends (“The One with the Embryos”) in which the characters play a trivia quiz about each other was, in what part of her body did Monica Geller (Courtney Cox) once get a pencil stuck? Chandler whispers his guess to Ross. Ross, Monica’s brother, is appalled, and says, “Ew, no! Her ear!”
According to screenrant, Friends is the 15h-longest running sitcom in television history. The show aired for 10 years and featured 236 episodes.
#1 on this list is The Simpsons, which premiered in 1989 and is still running today. As of 1/2/2022, 717 episodes have been aired.
Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons, named most of the characters in the Simpson family after members of his own family: Groening’s parents were named Homer and Margaret, his younger sisters are named Lisa and Maggie, and his paternal grandfather was named Abraham (the name of “Grandpa Simpson”).
On The Simpsons, Principal Skinner’s prisoner number in Vietnam was 24601, the same prisoner number as Twin Peaks ’ Hank Jennings and Les Miserables ’ Jean Valjean.
Victor Hugo loosely based the character Jean Valjean on the life of Eugène François Vidocq, an ex-convict who became a successful businessman known for his social engagement and philanthropy. In 1828, Vidocq saved one of the workers in his paper factory by lifting a heavy cart on his shoulders as Valjean does.
Jeans are pants made from denim or dungaree cloth. The jeans of today that we know and love were invented by Jacob Davis and Levi Strauss in 1873 in San Francisco. Jeans are named after the city of Genoa in Italy, a place where cotton corduroy, called either jean or jeane, was manufactured.
The Italian city of Genoa, the birthplace of Christopher Columbus, was the first northern city to rise against Nazi occupation and the Italian Fascists during WWII, liberating itself before the arrival of Allied troops.
Genoa salami’s distinctive flavor comes from it being made with pork and no beef, wine, garlic and peppercorns.
During the production of salami sausage, the constituent ingredients are cured and fermented, but not actually cooked. The meat used in salami is most commonly beef and/or pork, though other meats are traditionally used in some areas, including venison, turkey, goose, horse, and donkey (!) (in the Provence region of France).
Reindeer sausage is a uniquely successful product in Alaska, with nearly a million pounds produced each year. Reindeer meat is very lean so it must be mixed with beef and pork to increase the fat content of the sausage. Reindeer sausage contains up to 30% reindeer meat.
Four warships of the United States Navy have been named the USS Alaska, including an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine commissioned in 1986 and still in service.
In April of 1986 reactor #4 of the Chernobyl power plant failed and exploded, releasing at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the environment. Two workers died the night of the explosion, and at least 28 more people died within a few weeks as a result of acute radiation syndrome. 350,000 people were relocated, but resettlement of areas from which people were relocated is ongoing.
The power plant was located in what is now Ukraine, about 80 miles north of Kiev, and less than 15 miles from the Belarus border.
The primary difference between Chicken Cordon Bleu and Chicken Kiev is the filling . Chicken Kiev is stuffed with chilled garlic butter, while Chicken Cordon Bleu is stuffed with ham and cheese. Otherwise, the preparation and ingredients for these two recipes is almost identical.
The world’s largest airplane, the Antonov An-225 Mriya, is hangared in Kiev. Only one Mriya was ever built, and it is the heaviest airplane ever built. The Mriya, Ukrainian for dream, has been in service since its first flight in 1988.
Antonov State Enterprise (formerly the Antonov Aeronautical Scientific-Technical Complex) is an airplane manufacturer, owned by the Ukrainian government (and formerly owned by the Soviet Union). Antonov specializes in large aircraft (such as the Mriya), as well as aircraft which are designed for using undeveloped runways.