The ISO 3166 standard provides for country codes, both 2-letter and 3-letter standardized abbreviations. e.g. - US and USA, CN and CHN for China, and FR and FRA for France. For the Republic of Croatia the codes are HR and HRV for its Croatian name, Republika Hrvatska.
(Mexico uses day-fines for some offenses, including traffic.)
In Play:
South Africa uses ZA and Algeria uses DZ. Switzerland, with multiple national languages, uses CH, for “Cantons Helvetica”, the Latin name for its political union.
ZA is for the Dutch, Zuid-Afrika, and DZ is for Dzayer, the Berberic or Amazigh word.
Dutch elm disease is caused by a member of the sac fungi affecting elm trees, and is spread by the elm bark beetle. Although believed to be originally native to Asia, the disease has been accidentally introduced into America and Europe, where it has devastated native populations of elms that did not have resistance to the disease. Despite the name, the disease is not specific to the Dutch elm.
There are five Native American tribes that have reservations in Kansas: Iowa, Sac, Fox, Kickapoo and Pottawatomi. All of their reservations are in the extreme northeast corner of the state. None of them were among the plains Indians encountered by the first white settlers, but were instead relocated in Kansas later, from their original home in the northern forest, mainly in and around Wisconsin.
The extreme northeast corner of Saskatchewan contains Canada’s only quadpoint: Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the NWT and Nunavut all meet at 60°00′N latitude and 102°00′W longitude.
Canada’s Four Corners is marked by this monument marker: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Four_Corners_monument_(Canada).jpg
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USA’s Four Corners is marked by this monument marker: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Four_Corners-USA2308.JPG
Other countries having a quadripoint within its boundaries include Argentina, Kenya, Mexico, Sweden, and the UK.
The Fantastic Four is a fictional superhero team appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The group debuted in The Fantastic Four #1 in November 1961, which helped to usher in a new level of realism in the medium. The Fantastic Four was the first superhero team created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby, who developed a collaborative approach to creating comics that they would use from then on.
Ioan Gruffudd is a Welsh actor who has played Mr Fantastic in two movies, Fifth Officer Harold Lowe in Titanic, Horatio Hornblower in a successful tv series, and William Wilberforce, the 18th century anti-slavery activist in Amazing Grace. The latter movie ends with a pipe band playing “Amazing Grace”, which is completely a-historical since the tune was not played on the pipes until the mid-1970s, but it’s a stirring way to end an inspirational movie.
Actor Peter Billingsley, who played Ralphie in the movie Christmas Story, also played one of Santa’s elves in the movie Elf.
The porcelain collectible company Dept. 56’s Limited edition porcelain Christmas pieces include replicas of the house from Toy Story and a porcelain replica of Randy Quaid as Cousin Eddie standing with a hose in the “shitter’s full” scene from Christmas Vacation.
According to the Guinness world records, the tallest Christmas tree ever cut was a 221-foot Douglas fir that was displayed in 1950 at the Northgate Shopping Center in Seattle, Washington.
The Douglas Aircraft Corporation produced 607 DC-3s between 1935 and 1950 for civilian use. It is estimated that abut 400 of them are still airworthy and operational, a few of them regularly flown by commercial airlines…
My mother was a stewardess on DC-3s for Philippine Airlines. In 1959 she was given the company’s Miss Aviation award and was described as a ‘Eurasian beauty’ - she is half Russian and half Filipina. An internet search just now did not find any info on that, however, so the only available cite for this is… Bullitt. 
Missed the edit window for ETA: she was featured in the Manila Times complete with glamour photos of her in and around airplanes. There was also a bathing suit shot of her on a beach.
Careful, guys, this is my mother you may (or may not) be thinking about. She is now 75.
And… the term ‘stewardess’ was in use back then. Now it’s flight attendant, I believe.
A maternal insult (also referred to as a “yo mama” joke) is a reference to a person’s mother through the use of phrases such as “your mother” or other regional variants, frequently used to insult the target by way of their mother.
Although the phrase has a long history of including a description portion (such as the old “your mother wears combat boots”, which implied that one’s mother worked as a prostitute in the military), the phrase “yo mama” by itself, without any qualifiers, has become commonly used as an all-purpose insult or an expression of defiance
On December 3, 2015, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, announced that all combat positions would be opened to women, and required all military services to implement the policy within 30 days. If women are allowed in to combat roles they will have to meet the necessary requirements. The decision was not supported by Gen. Joseph Dunford of the Marine Corps, who wanted to keep certain positions closed to women.
Ash, a member of the olive family, is one of the strongest most resilient woods. It is widely used for baseball bats and also musical instruments, such as guitar bodies and drum shells, for its sustaining resonance. Of the many varieties of ash, the Northern White Ash is preferred for high quality products. It is mainly harvested in the New York-Pennsylvania border area.
Most MLB baseball bats are made of ash. Some are made of hickory, maple and bamboo. Maple bats were first used in 1997.
Maple White Land is the South American plateau that George Edward Challenger and his collegues found to be inhabited by dinosaurs and ape-men in Sir Arthur Conan’s Doyles book “The Lost World”. The name came from the map of an American explorer named Maple White, who died before he could reveal the secrets of the Lost World.