The University of Oxford has no known date of founding, although there is evidence of teaching since 1096.
Ab urbe condita (AUC) is a Latin phrase meaning “from the founding of the city (i.e. Rome)”, traditionally dated to 753 BC. AUC is a year-numbering system used by some ancient Roman historians to identify particular Roman years.
In mythology, Rome was founded by the twin brothers Romulus and Remus, sons of Mars (or maybe Hercules) and the Vestal virgin Rhea Silvia. Once the twins were born, her father Amulius had them abandoned to die in the Tiber river. They were saved by a series of miraculous interventions: the river carried them to safety, a she-wolf found and suckled them, and a woodpecker fed them. A shepherd and his wife found them and fostered them to manhood as simple shepherds.
Romulus and Remus are the twin stars at the core of the Romulan Star Empire in the various incarnations of Star Trek. In the movie Star Trek: Nemesis, we are first shown the Remans, a vassal-race which is an entirely different species from its masters the Romulans.
The Russian version of the name Remus is Rem. Under Stalin’s rule, it was a popular choice for male babies, as it was also the acronym for Revolutsia, Elektrifikatsia, Mir - “revolution, electrification, peace”.
Nm, ninja’d.
Historians working after the Soviet Union’s dissolution in 1991 have estimated the number of people killed under the Stalin regime ranging from approximately 4 million to nearly 10 million, not including those who died in famines.
Soviet tyrant Josef Stalin may have had some sort of nervous breakdown after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. According to contemporary accounts, he was out of the public eye for several days and seemed incapable of making crucial decisions before eventually recovering.
The Residence of Bukovinian and Dalmatian Metropolitans in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was designed by Czech architect Josef Hlávka.
The Czech translation of Les Miserables “Do You Hear the People Sing” managed to find two Czech words to rhyme with “France”
Půjdem hájit právo vzpřímeni i srdce dáme všanc…
Naše trikolora zavlaje a neztratíme glanc…
Jen ať žije svoboda, život a vlast, vive le France!
which translates:
Půjdem defend the right upright heart and we are risking …
Our tricolor will unfold and lose glanc …
Only long live freedom, life and fatherland , vive le France !
The ocean liner SS Leviathan (nicknamed Levi Nathan), flagship of United States Lines, had been built in Germany for Hamburg-America Line as the Vaterland, before being seized as post-WW1 war reparations.
The SS Vaterland, when launched on 13 April 1911, was the largest passenger ship in the world, superseding the SS Imperator. It was later superseded by the SS Bismarck, which later became the RMS Majestic.
The German battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz were the only ships of their class. Both were destroyed during World War II.
The city of Bismarck, North Dakota, was founded in 1872 and was originally named “Edwinton”, after Edwin Ferry Johnson, a chief engineer for the Northern Pacific Railway company.
In 1872 Bismarck ND was founded at what was then called Missouri Crossing, so named because the Lewis and Clark Expedition crossed the river there. In 1873 the Northern Pacific Railway renamed the city Bismarck, in honor of German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, in hopes of attracting German investment.
The jelly-filled doughnut known in much of North America as a Bismarck is called a Berliner in much of Germany and Switzerland - but not Berlin, where pfannkuchen, *fassnacht *or krupfen are more common names.
In the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens won four gold medals in the sprint and long jump events and became the most successful athlete to compete in Berlin. The host country was the most successful country overall with 89 medals total, with the United States coming in second with 56 medals.
During his lengthy career the composer Irving Berlin wrote about 1,500 songs, including the scores for 19 Broadway shows and 18 Hollywood films. His songs were nominated eight times for Academy Awards.
Irving Street in San Francisco’s Sunset District is one of the alphabetically ordered set of sequential streets. One of the most convenient places to see most of them is along 19th Avenue on the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. The streets include Hugo (from Arguello to 7th Avenue only), Irving, Judah, Kirkham, Lawton, Moraga, Noriega, Ortega, Pacheco, Quintara, Rivera, Santiago, Taraval, Ulloa, Vicente, Wawona, and Yorba.
X" was originally proposed to be Xavier, but was changed to Yorba due to a pronunciation controversy.
The French author Pierre Boulle, who wrote the novel *Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï *(The Bridge over the River Kwai), also wrote *La planète des singes *(The Planet of the Apes).