Air Canada was originally a Crown corporation, operated by the federal government under the name “Trans-Canada Airlines.”
The name was changed to the bilingual “Air Canada” in the mid-sixties as a result of a private member’s bill introduced by a rookie MP, a young fellow named Jean Chrétien.
Jean-Luc Ponty, who was born in France, was originally trained and played as a classical violinist in an orchestra in Paris. However, his interest in jazz eventually led him to emigrate to the United States, where he toured with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Ponty performed on Elton John’s 1972 album Honky Chateau, and he contributed to two albums by the Mahavishnu Orchestra.
The Chateau Frontenac is a luxury hotel on the heights of Quebec. It was built in the late 19th century by the Canadian Pacific Railway Co. as part of its chain of luxury hotels.
The Pacific Ocean covers more of the Earth’s surface than all the continents combined.
If you took all of the water on Earth (all of the water in the oceans, ice caps, lakes, rivers, groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant.) It would fit into a sphere just 860 mi in diameter.
Despite its inappropriate name, the Caspian Sea is the worlds largest lake. Its size of 143,000 square miles is more than four times the size of the worlds second-largest lake, Lake Superior.
Wild beluga sturgeon caviar from the Caspian Sea was priced in 2012 at $16,000 per 1 kilogram (35 oz).
1 kilogram is ~ 35.274 avoirdupois ounces, but only ~32.151 Troy ounces. Note that “Troy weight” is named for Troyes, France, not the Troy made famous by Homer.
An ounce of air, water, or feathers weighs about 10% less than an ounce of gold, but a pound of air, water, or feathers weighs about 20% more than a pound of gold, because the units of measurement, though they share the same names, are not the same at all.
A cubic meter of gold weighs over 19 metric tons. 19 metric tons is almost 42,000 pounds.
There are currently 147.3 million ounces of gold in Fort Knox, KY.
The song “Sixteen Tons” is coal-miner’s lament, written by Merle Travis and first recorded in 1946 reflecting his own family’s experience in the mines of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. Tennessee Ernie Ford’s 1955 version spent ten weeks at number one on the country charts and seven weeks at number one on the pop charts. The record sold over twenty million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. The song made Ford a crossover star, and became his signature song.
The meaning and origin of the word “Tennessee” are uncertain. Some accounts suggest it is a Cherokee modification of an earlier Yuchi word. It has been said to mean “meeting place”, “winding river”, or “river of the great bend”. According to ethnographer James Mooney, the name “can not be analyzed” and its meaning is lost.
Tennessee is also the only state name that only uses the vowel “e” in its name.
Mississippi is the only state name that only uses the vowel “i” in its name.
Alaska, Arkansas, Alabama, and Kansas are the four states that only use the vowel “a” in their names.
(Depending on your definition of the letter “y”, Maryland and New Jersey may also qualify as states that use just one vowel in their names.)
The name of the letter “y” in French is “i-grec”, meaning "Greek i ". The name dates back two millennia to the Roman era, when the Romans borrowed it from Greek. The other Romance languages have similar names for “y”.
Old English borrowed the letter directly from Latin, and it acquired a new name in English.
Old English is the name given to the vernacular language of England from the settlement of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes until the 12th century. It is also sometimes called Anglo-Saxon, although noted philologist, academic and later author JRR Tolkien preferred the term “Old English.”
The common word for a bird in Old English was “fugel,” but at some point the word “bird” pushed it aside. Precisely why no one can say, and in fact the etymology of “bird” - “brid” as it was usually said inOld English- is a mystery.
“Fugel” lives on as our food-specific word “fowl.”
The German word for ‘bird’ is ‘vogel’ (pronounced ‘foe-gell’ with a hard ‘g’), which is similar to the Old English word. This is not surprising when one considers that the Angles, Saxons and Jutes were all Northern Germanic tribes.
Minor correction: Anglo-Saxons were West Germanic.
In play:
Frisian is the language closest to English, particularly West Frisian, spoken on the North Sea coast of the Netherlands, which is believed to be close to where the Anglo-Saxons lived before emigrating to Britain.
Fries roggebrood, Frisian rye bread, is known for its long baking time (up to 20 hours), resulting in a distinctive sweet taste and a deep dark color.