Ottawa is the seventh coldest national capital in the world. Ulaanbaatar is the coldest.
Those seven coldest national capitals are, in order from the coldest, are
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia;
Astana, Kazakhstan;
Moscow, Russia;
Helsinki, Finland;
Reykjavik, Iceland;
Tallinn, Estonia; and
Ottawa, Canada.
The Supreme Court of Canada originally sat in a converted stable on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
The heaviest stable atom is lead. It is theorized that there is an island of stability in the higher atomic numbered atoms.
The Peace Tower, or tour de Victoire et de Paix, Tower of Victory and Peace, is the clock tower on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. It replaced the Victoria Tower that burned down in 1916. When the Peace Tower was completed in 1927, the construction of Parliament Hill was considered complete. The Peace Tower figures prominently on the $20 CAD bill.
The Peace Tower was intended to be a memorial to all Canadians who had giventheir lives during the Great War (WWI), but its walls did not have enough space to be engraved with all 66,000 names. Instead, Books of Remembrance are displayed. All Canadians who died in service of the Crown in the Nile Expedition, the Boer War, WWI, WWII (effectively ended by the atomic bomb), and the Korean War.
Displayed in glass cases on seven altars, the pages of each book are turned at 11 AM daily so every name is on display to visitors at least once during each calendar year.
ETA: added atomic bomb due to the ninja
Freddy Mercury, lead singer of Queen, had this name (but not his atomic number) on his passport.
His original name was Farook Bulsara.
Also ninja’d, playing on “lead” but “atomic” also works.
While the London production of the Queen jukebox musical We Will Rock You was panned by the critics, the production ran for over 12 years and has had over 30 worldwide productions. But it has yet to hit Broadway.
Ulaanbaatar and Astana, the two coldest national capital in the world, are both further south than London.
The city with the long name goes by “UB”. Ulaanbaatar (Улаанбаатар), is also known as Ulan Bator, or Ulan-Batar. UB is the capital of Mongolia. UB’s central square, Chinggis Khan Square (formerly known as Sukhbaatar Square), is one of the largest squares in Asia. It has an equestrian statue of the 1921 revolution hero Sükhbaatar, and a seated statue of Chinggis Khaan and his sons and 2 military generals called Urlugs, or heroes.
Mongolia is the only modern country to have one of the three races of humanity named after it. Mongoloid, Caucasoid and Negroid. Now, it is generally recognized that everyone is Mongoloid, as there is no distinguishable difference between the three.
Using mongol and mongoloid as a term for Down’s syndrome actually dates back to the 1860s, when a doctor called John Langdon Down published a paper on the condition. The term fell into disfavor in the 1980s.
(Annie Xmas, I saw the Toronto production of the Queen musical. The actors and music were good but the plot was ridiculous. After seeing it I know why it hasn’t made it to Broadway)
In rewsponse to the success of Mensa, Kevin Langdon and Ronald Hoeflin began to form higher-IQ societies in the 1970s. Mensa is open to one person out of 50 with a 98%ile qualifiation. One of Hoeflin’s societies, the Mega society, admints only one in a million, and has 26 members… I was one of the early members of the OATH (One-in-a-thousand) society, created by Hoeflin, which requires IQ at the 99.9%ile. Langdon’s Four-Sigma society requires 99.997 and has 600 members.
Every member of the Straight Dope, each and every one of us, has a mother. Happy Mother’s Day, Dopers, and we are grateful for our moms!
Happy Mother’s Day!
When the Canadian Parliament Centre Block burnt down, the Commons was in session. The members of Parliament fled through the smoke, with the Prime Minister at one point going on his hands and knees to get under the smoke.
It’s believed it was started by a cigar butt tossed into a wastebasket in the reading room, which was full of newspapers.
If your mom smokes, she’s more likely to cause a fire than if she does not.
Link? A person who smokes might be more conscious of fire danger, and more likely to be careful enough to make sure fire is prevented or under control. So smokers may actually cause fewer fires than people who do not anticipate fire danger.
A person who can swim is more likely to drown than one who cannot, because people who can’t swim don’t go in the water.
The story of Scarlett, a mother cat who almost died rescuing her kittens, attracted wide media attention. In 1996, Scarlett and her five kittens were in an abandoned garage used as a crack house in Brooklyn when a fire started. The New York City Fire Department responded to a call about the fire and quickly extinguished it.
When the fire was under control, one of the firefighters on the scene noticed Scarlett carrying her kittens away from the garage one by one. Scarlett herself had been severely burned in the process of pulling her kittens from the fire. Her eyes were blistered shut, her ears and paws burned, and her coat highly singed. The majority of her facial hair had been burnt away. After saving the kittens she was seen to touch each of her kittens with her nose to ensure they were all there and alive, as the blisters on her eyes kept her from being able to see them, and then she collapsed unconscious.
Scarlett and 4 of her kittens survived the fire; she needed special treatment for the burns for the rest of her life and died in 2008.
Scarlett Johansson, actress and singer, has been named the “Sexiest Woman Alive” by Esquire magazine in both 2006 and 2013, the only woman to be chosen for the title twice.
Swedish heavyweight Ingemar Johansson defeated Floyd Patterson by TKO in the third round, after flooring Patterson seven times in that round, to win the World Heavyweight Championship. As a result, Johansson was awarded the Hickok Belt as top professional athlete of 1959 – the only non-American to do so in the belt’s entire 27-year existence – and was named the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year and Sports Illustrated magazine’s “Sportsman of the Year”. He called his right fist “toonder and lightning” for its concussive power (it was also called “Ingo’s bingo” and the “hammer of Thor”).
Pete Rademacher is the only heavyweight boxer to ever get a shot at the title in his firsr professional fight. He challenged Floyd Patterson in 1957, and knocked Patterson down in the second round, but Patterson recovered and knocked out Rademacher in the sixth round. Rademacher, from the tiny town of Tieton, near Yakima in central Washingon, had previously won the Olympic gold medal. He went on to compile a 15-7-1 record as a provessional heavyweight, but never got another shot at the title.
Selah (Hebrew: סֶלָה) is a word used seventy-four times in the Hebrew Bible—seventy-one times in the Psalms and three times in Habakkuk. The meaning of the word is not known, though there are various interpretations. Selah may indicate a break in the song whose purpose is similar to that of Amen (Hebrew: “so be it”).
The town of Selah WA is very close to the town of Tieton WA.