The ‘generally accepted’ definition of a mountain (versus a hill) is 1000 meters (~3281 feet) in height. Yet, in Japan, there are over 70 of these geologic features that are less than 1000 meters in height that are labelled as mountains. The shortest of these is Mount Komaki, which stands 86 meters (282 feet) above the surrounding plain.
The Englishman who Went up a Hill but Came down a Mountain is a 1995 British film based on a story heard by Christopher Monger from his grandfather about the real village of Taff’s Well, in the old county of Glamorgan, and its neighbouring Garth Hill. The plot revolves around two English cartographers, the pompous Garrad (Ian McNeice) and his junior, Anson (Hugh Grant). They arrive at the fictional Welsh village of Ffynnon Garw ([ˈfɪn.nɔn ˈɡa.rʊ] “Rough Fountain” or “Rough Spring” in Welsh) to measure its “mountain” – only to cause outrage when they conclude that it is only a hill because it is slightly short of the required 1000 feet (305 m) in height. The villagers, aided and abetted by the wily Morgan the Goat (Colm Meaney) and the Reverend Mr Jones (Kenneth Griffith) (who after initially opposing the scheme, grasps its symbolism in restoring the community’s war-damaged self-esteem), conspire with Morgan to delay the cartographers’ departure while they build an earth mound on top of the hill to make it high enough to be considered a mountain.
Welsh is the only Celtic language which UNESCO does not classify as “endangered.”
UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization formed in 1946, has has 195 member states as of November 2015. The United States intends to withdraw from UNESCO at the end of 2018 because it wants to stop accumulating unpaid dues and to make a stand on what it says is an anti-Israel bias at the U.N.’s educational, science and cultural organization.
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That is funny, calling a 282-foot bump in the terrain a ‘mountain’!
Mount Sunflower is the official name of the geographical feature that is the highest point in Kansas. But the actual highest point in the state is man-made, a grain elevator several miles to the south at Weskan, Kansas.
Florida is a relatively flat state. Its highest point, at lat/long of (30.988333, -86.281944) is Britton Hill and is only 312 feet above sea level. It is essentially on the Alabama state line. Florida shares its high point with Alabama, but Alabama‘s highest point is Cheaha Mountain, 2,407 feet above sea level.
ETA: Mount Sunflower, the highest point in Kansas, is 4,039’ ASL.
The highest point in flat Nebraska, Panorama Point, is more than a thousand feet higher than the highest point in "The Green Mountain State’, Vermont’s Mount Mansfield. And the lowest point in Montana is on its western, not its eastern border, even though all the mountains of Montana are in the western half of the state.
Agiocochook, the Native American name for Mount Washington, is the highest point in New Hampshire. Although it is a modest 6,288‘ high, it is the most prominent mountain east of the Mississippi River and is notorious for its erratic weather. On the afternoon of April 12, 1934, the Mount Washington Observatory recorded a windspeed of 231 MPH at the summit, the world record for most of the 20th century, and still a record for measured wind speeds not involved with a tropical cyclone.
The highest point in Illinois is the top of the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) in Chicago, not a point of natural terrain. Similarly, the highest point in Louisiana is the top of One Shell Square in New Orleans. The state with the lowest highest point (that’s grammatical so shut up) is Florida, with Britton Hill at 345 feet.
Many states are flat, such that their highest point is on the state’s shared boundary with another state.
One example is Florida. Its highest point is on the state boundary with Alabama — 345’ high Britton Hill (gMap).
Another example is Illinois. Its highest point is on the state boundary with Wisconsin — 1,235’ high Charles Mound (gMap).
If the ‘flatness’ of a state is measured by the difference in the lowest natural point ASL and the highest natural point ASL, then Florida is the ‘flattest’ state, followed by Delaware, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Rhode Island. The ‘least flat’ states, by order of decreasing magnitude, are Alaska, California, Washington, Hawaii, and Nevada.
(And my home state of Kansas, long derided as being flat, doesn’t even make the top 20 states in terms of flatness. It’s #21!)
(Kansas is flat, just tilted a bit)
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is a satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott, first published in 1884 by Seeley & Co. of London. Written pseudonymously by “A Square”, the book used the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland to comment on the hierarchy of Victorian culture, but the novella’s more enduring contribution is its examination of dimensions. The story describes a two-dimensional world occupied by geometric figures, whereof women are simple line-segments, while men are polygons with various numbers of sides.
Illinois has been spending more than it takes in for more than two decades, and the state deficit at the close of 2017, even after passage of the state’s largest-ever tax hike, was a record $16 billion.
ETA: Ninja’d! Tax policy is not discussed in Flatland.
In The Blues Brothers, Henry Gibson, perhaps otherwise best known for his Flower Child poems on “Laugh-In” and as the scheming governor in Robert Altman’s Nashville, played the leader of the Illinois Nazis, hated by both Jake and Elwood for disrupting their goal of paying off the orphanage’s back taxes.
Point well taken, Elvis!
In Play:
Nashville, Tennessee is the state capital, and, depending on the measure used, either the largest or 2nd-largest city in the state. It was founded in 1779 and was named for Revolutionary War hero Francis Nash. While it is perhaps best known as a music recording and production center, including being the home of the Grand Old Opry, its largest industry is health care. Nashville is home to more than 300 health care companies, including Hospital Corporation of America (HCA), the world’s largest private operator of hospitals.
The Nash Rambler is a North American automobile that was produced by the Nash Motors division of Nash-Kelvinator Corporation from 1950 to 1954. On May 1, 1954, Nash-Kelvinator merged with the Hudson Motor Car Company to form American Motors Corporation (AMC). The Nash Rambler was then built by AMC in Kenosha, Wisconsin through 1955.
The Playmates’ song “Beep Beep!” tells of the narratorbeing overtaken by a Nash Rambler in second gear, despite his determination to “show him that a Cadillac is not a car to scorn”.
Elvis, you needed to post the song: BEEP BEEP ~ THE LITTLE NASH RAMBLER ~ The PLAYMATES ~ ANIMATION - YouTube
in play:
The Rambler Channel is a body of water in Hong Kong that separates Tsing Yi Island from Tsuen Wan and Kwai Chung in the New Territories. The channel separates the two landmasses by 900 metres at its widest point. Six road bridges and one rail bridge span the channel,
The Central–Mid-Levels escalator and walkway system in Hong Kong allows residents of the Hong Kong Island hillside to commute to work in the Central district, or catch the Star Ferry to Kowloon. Apart from serving as a method of transporting, the system is also a tourist attraction and has restaurants, bars, and shops lining its route. The one-way escalators and moving walkways run downhill from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and then uphill from 10 a.m. to midnight daily. If users want to travel in an opposite way, they need to use the staircases and ramps along the escalator, which consists of total 782 steps between Conduit Road and Queen’s Road Central footbridge.
I’ve ridden the length of it. Bizarre but it does its job.
In You Only Live Twice, British SIS Agent James Bond is the subject of a faked murder in Hong Kong. After burial at sea, his “body” is recovered by Royal Navy frogmen and he is taken to meet with M, his boss.
“Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” has been the traditional opening line for Saturday Night Live. Chevy Chase was the first person to say it, opening the first show in October, 1975.