Today’s most prominent concert singer of German lieder, bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff, has very short legs and hands that come directiy out of his shoulders, due to his mother’s prenatal usage of Thalidomide. He has twice won Grammy awards for Best Classical Vocal Performance, of Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn and for Schubert: Lieder with Orchestra.
Senior SS leader Reinhard Heydrich, chair of the Wannsee Conference and notorious as the “Butcher of Prague,” was the only German leader successfully targeted for assassination by the British or their allies (in this case, the Czechs) during World War II.
Prague is home to the world’s last preserved municipal pneumatic post system, an underground system of metal tubes running under the center of Prague and totalling about 34 miles in length.
The Czech Republic is a land-locked country bordered by Germany, Poland, Austria and Slovakia.
In Alfred Jarry’s play Ubu Roi (sequel to Pere Ubu, the antihero – a man who is only interested in his own self-gratification – has become King of Poland. The authors notes say that means he is king of nowhere, which wasn’t an insult at the time (1896), since Poland had been carved up and did not exist as a separate country.
Poland is bordered on the north by the Baltic Sea, and by the countries Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and an exclave of Russia.
Poland was partitioned between Prussia, Austria, and Russia three times between 1772 and 1795. It would not be resurrected as an independent nation for another 123 years.
The exclave of Russia is a portion surrounded by other countries. This particular exclave contains the city of Kaliningrad, is on the Baltic Sea, and is bordered by Poland and Lithuania.
In the last completely historical Doctor Who episode, “Black Orchid”, the Doctor tells someone at a party that Adric was from Alzarius. The other man says, “Alzarius…never could remember all those funny Baltic bits.”
Kaliningrad was once Koenigsburg, East Prussia. It was best known as the birthplace of philosopher Immanuel Kant.
Kant wrote,
"All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions:
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What can I know?
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What ought I to do?
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What may I hope?"
Immanuel Kant was one of the first to propose a scientifically grounded theory for the formation of our Solar System.
One of Boston’s nicknames, The Hub, comes from a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table: “A jaunty-looking person… said there was one more wise man’s saying that he had heard; it was about our place—but he didn’t know who said it… ‘Boston State-House is the Hub of the Solar System. You couldn’t pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crow-bar.’”
Mars is the only planet in the Solar System where US coins have been photographed.
The best candy on Earth comes from Mars.
There are two planets in the Solar System where US coins have been photographed. There are numerous photographs of US coins taken on Earth.
The U.S. Attorney in Cleveland, Ohio is now prosecuting several Amish men on hate crime charges for allegedly forcibly cutting the beards and hair of other Amish people with whom they disagreed over doctrinal issues and questions of authority.
Ronald Reagan played Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander in the movie The Winning Team.
Grampa Simpson once boasted that President Grover Cleveland had paddled him nonconsecutively.
In Look Homeward, Angel, protagonist Eugene Gant has twin brothers named Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison.