Other European country abbreviations that are not obvious, like FRA and ITA for Frnce and Italy, include:
CHE, Switzerland, for Confoederatio Helvetica (as jtur88 explained)
HRV, Croatia, for Hrvatska
DEU, Germany, for Deutschland
VAT, the Holy See, for Vatican City
MKD, Macedonia, for Makedonija
ESP, Spain, for España
These abbreviations are Country Codes defined in an ISO standard, ISO 3166-1, Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions – Part 1: Country codes. Wikipedia has a nice table for it. Each country has a 2-letter and a 3-letter code.
The country with the most shopping malls with 100,000 m^2 of gross leasable area (GLA) is The Philippines, with 36. Second place with only 17 is Indonesia, followed by China and the US with 15 and 13.
The largest shopping mall in the world by total area as stated on Wikipedia is The Dubai Mall, which holds the Guinness World Record for being the largest Mall in terms of total floor space area, being larger than 50 soccer fields, and with 1,200 stores, 14,000 car parking spaces, and the world’s largest shoe store.
Minnesota humorist Garrison Keillor, perhaps best known for The Prairie Home Companion, wrote a novel about an early radio station inside a restaurant with the callsign WLT, for “With Lettuce and Tomato.”
Although in general, radio stations east of the Mississippi River have call letters that begin with a W, and those west of the river begin with K, there are exceptions. KDKA in Pittsburgh, for example, is one of the earliest established stations in the country, having been founded in 1920.
I’ve been there. They forgot to mention the 3-story high aquarium and the full size ice rink…
In Play:
The “Pittsburg Salad” is a large bowl containing crisp iceberg lettuce; cucumbers, tomatoes, maybe some onions; and hot steak or grilled chicken, a generous handful of crispy fries, and a mound of shredded cheddar cheese. Dressing (Usually Italian) and croutons are optional.
In September 1919 Pittsburgh steel makers published information exposing AFL National Committee co-chairman William Z. Foster’s past as a Wobblie and syndicalist, and claimed this was evidence that the then current steelworker strike was being masterminded by communists and revolutionaries.
Fred Rose, a Communist member of the Canadian House of Commons, was arrested on the floor of the Commons and charged with espionage in relation to the Gouzenko affair.
Pete Rose Jr. was sentenced to one month in federal prison in 2006, and house arrest for five more months after release from prison, for distributing gamma-Butyrolactone (GBL) to teammates in the late 1990s. GBL is sold under the counter at retailers as a sports performance enhancer as well as a sedative. When taken orally, GBL is converted to the “date-rape” drug GHB [gamma hydroxybutyrate]. Rose claimed that he distributed GBL to teammates to help them relax after games.
The headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, is both too small for the bureau’s current needs and is crumbling in place. The FBI is looking into relocating elsewhere in the Washington, D.C. area; early cost estimates are quite large.
While the headquarters of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are in Ottawa, the heart of the Mounties is Depot Division in Regina. Depot started as the main depot for supplies for the Mounties in the then North-West Territories, but it has evolved into the main training facility for all cadets entering the RCMP. It contains the Chapel, noted for weddings and funerals of members of the RCMP and their families and also the RCMP Heritage Centre, a museum for the history and current roles of the Mounties in Canada.
Depot Division has its own ensign in the series of the RCMP flags. Its emblem is the lamp of knowledge.
Depot Division also has a cemetery for deceased members of the service, including a memorial to the over 75 Mounties who have died in the line of duty.
Dudley Do-Right is the hero of “Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties”, a segment on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show that parodied early 20th-century melodrama and silent films, using only a piano as a musical background.
Rocky and Bullwinkle share the middle initial “J,” but their middle names are never revealed. Matt Groening gave the three male members of the Simpson family "“- Bartholomew J., Homer J. and Abraham J. "“- the same initial as a tribute to Rocky and Bullwinkle.
Rocky and Bullwinkle lived in Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, a reference to International Falls, on the Canadian border. The town, which often reported the coldest winter temperatures in the contiguous US, was also the home of NFL great Bronko Nagurski.
Although the trope of a damsel in distress being tied to a railroad track by a mustachioed villain is thought of as a common element of early silent films, in fact, between 1874 and 1910, at least six people died in the United States after having been tied to railroad tracks
Republicans served as President of the United States in both 1874 and 1910 - Ulysses S. Grant of Illinois (although born in Ohio) and William Howard Taft of Ohio, respectively.