The first person to climb Mount Everest in 1953 was a New Zealander - Sir Edmund Hillary.
In Star Trek: First Contact (1996), in the scene where Jean-Luc Picard opens a viewing port and shows Lilly that she is in a starship orbiting Earth, he shows her New Guinea and Australia.
But, New Zealand is missing.
“Port” and “starboard” mean the left and right sides of a boat or ship, respectively.
“Starboard” is derived from “steering-board” which traditionally was on the right side of the boat. When a boat came alongside a pier, the steering board side would be along the wharf, and the other side of the boat would face the harbour, or port.
Port Wine is a sweet fortified red wine produced in the Douro Valley of Portugal. It is the city of Porto in Northwest Portugal that gives the name to the wine, because that’s where the wine is aged in cellars and is shipped from to all over the world.
Port became very popular in England after the Methuen Treaty of 1703, when merchants were permitted to import it at a low duty, while war with France deprived English wine drinkers of French wine. British importers recognized that this smooth wine would appeal to English palates and also would survive the trip to London.
Good trivia!
Over half of the world’s cork is produced in Portugal.
Nazaré Canyon is an undersea canyon just off the coast of Nazaré, Portugal, which has a maximum depth of at least 16,000 ft and is about 140 miles long. Under certain atmospheric conditions, the canyon creates enormous waves just off the town of Nazaré where numerous world records for large wave surfing have been set. It’s also one of the most - if not THE most - dangerous place in the world for big wave surfing - the waves don’t break off-shore, they crash right on the beach and against the rocks.
The town of Nazaré is on Portugal’s Silver Coast, the Costa da Prata. The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Nazaré marks where the Legend of Nazaré took place in September 1182, when Dom Fuas Roupinho, the alcalde of Porto de Mós, Portugal, was out hunting in his domain, near the coast, when he saw a deer which he imnediately began chasing. All of a sudden a heavy fog rose up from the sea. The deer ran towards the top of a cliff and Dom Fuas in the midst of the fog was cut off from his companions. When he realised he was on the edge of the cliff he recognised the place. He was next to a small grotto where a statue of Our Lady with the Enfant was venerated. Thus he prayed out loud Our Lady, Help Me. All of a sudden the horse miraculously stopped at the end of a rocky point suspended over the void, the Bico do Milagre (Point of the Miracle), thus saving the rider and his mount from a drop of more than 100 metres, a fall that would certainly have caused their death.
When Napoleon and his troops invaded Portugal in 1807, the the royal family and the Portuguese nobility relocated to the Portuguese territory of Brazil in South America. The government remained in Rio de Janeiro for 14 years, until King João VI returned to Lisbon in 1821 to quell an internal revolution. His son, Pedro, was left in charge of the Brazilian government, but, in 1822, Pedro declared Brazil’s independence from Portugal. Brazilian independence was formally recognized in 1825.
The Treaty of Tordesillas, (June 7, 1494), was an agreement between Spain and Portugal aimed at settling conflicts over lands newly discovered or explored by Christopher Columbus and other late 15th-century voyagers.
In 1493, after reports of Columbus’s discoveries had reached them, the Spanish rulers Ferdinand and Isabella enlisted papal support for their claims to the New World in order to inhibit the Portuguese and other possible rival claimants. To accommodate them, the Spanish-born pope Alexander VI issued bulls setting up a line of demarcation from pole to pole 100 leagues (about 320 miles) west of the Cape Verde Islands. Spain was given exclusive rights to all newly discovered and undiscovered lands in the region west of the line. Portuguese expeditions were to keep to the east of the line. Neither power was to occupy any territory already in the hands of a Christian ruler.
Fire From Heaven and The Persian Boy, by Mary Renault, are two novels (published 1969 and 1972) that present a extremely favorable, admiring fictionalized view of Alexander the Great. In contrast, God of War (2012) by Christian Cameron shows Alexander as a sociopathic monster.
Alexander III was the last King of Scots of the Dunkeld line. Upon his death, his only heir was his granddaughter Margaret of Norway, at that time three years old. When she died on her way to Scotland, it triggered a two year interregnum and succession crisis. John of Balliol was imposed on the Scots by the English king, but he proved ineffectual, leading to his nick name “Toom Tabard” (the “empty cloak”).
The Lærdal Tunnel in Norway is the world’s longest road tunnel. 15 miles long, it connects Lærdal to Aurland in southern Norway, some 100 miles northeast of Bergen. gMap — Google Maps
The origin of the name of New Jersey’s Bergen County is a matter of debate. Several sources attribute the name to Bergen, Norway, while others attribute it to Bergen, North Holland in the Netherlands.Some sources say that the name is derived from one of the earliest settlers of New Amsterdam (now New York City), Hans Hansen Bergen, a native of Norway.
New Jersey’s population density (1,210.10/sq mi) is more than that of China. If New Jersey were a country or dependent territory its population density would rank #24 in the world (List of countries and dependencies by population density - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
Joanne Fluke’s first Hannah Swenson culinary mystery was Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder. While she was written three others based on chocolate desserts (Fudge Cupcake Murder, Devil’s Food Cake Murder and Double Fudge Brownie Murder) it is only her next, the 24th book in the series, that has a “chocolate” title: Chocolate Cream Pie Murder.
Roald Dahl, author of James and the Giant Peach (1961) and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), also wrote a short story that described the intricacies of tasting wine, with a twist at the end. The short story, Taste was first published in the March of 1945 issue of Ladies Home Journal. Its complete text can be found on LinkedIn: Taste - Roald Dahl (short story no. 32).
Peachtree Street is one of several major streets running through the city of Atlanta. Natives like to joke that half of the streets in Atlanta are named Peachtree, and the other half have five names to make up for it. While ‘Peachtree’ alone almost always refers to this street or its continuations, there are 71 streets in Atlanta with a variant of ‘Peachtree’ in their name.
Major League Baseball’s Atlanta Braves won an unprecedented 14 consecutive division titles, from 1991 to 2005, except for the strike-shortened 1994 season when there were no official division champions. Since their debut in the National League in 1876, the franchise has won 17 divisional titles, 17 National League pennants, and three World Series championships—in 1914 as the Boston Braves, in 1957 as the Milwaukee Braves, and in 1995 in Atlanta.
The Braves are the only Major League Baseball franchise to have won the World Series in three different home cities.
The Milwaukee Brewers have played in 4 of the 6 divisions of Major League Baseball - the American League West, East, and Central, and the National League Central. In their first season, as the Seattle Pilots, there were no divisions yet.
The peach (Prunus persica) is indigenous to the Northwest region of China. Worldwide, China produces the largest amount of peaches, 55% of the world total. Italy, Spain and the US follow. In the US, South Carolina (“the Palmetto State”) produces three times as many peaches as Georgia (“the Peach State”).