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7 wonders of the Czech Republic: the results are in! / 7 divu Ceske Republiky: hlasy jsou sectene!

Czech glass google imageRemember when we were voting on 7 wonders of the Czech Republic? Well, the votes have been counted and the results are in. Here they are:

1. Czech Beer

  • it has its trademark in EU now
  • the Czechs drink annually about 160 liters per person, which makes them the world winners
  • the historical records of Czech beer reach all the way to 1088 (during the reign of king Vratislav II.)
  • year 1842 welcomes the birth of Pilsener Urquell, the most popular Czech beer ever

2. Czech glass

  • known for its high quality (on the home front and worldwide)
  • it has been around since the 13th century
  • Czech crystal chandeliers decorate the opera house in Rome, Milan’s La Scala or Versailles
  • 19th century Czech artist Bedrich Egermann pushed ahead the ‘crazy’ thought of glass becoming a new form or sculpturing material

3. Charles the Fourth (1316 – 1378)

  • The most well-known Czech king ever, known as the Father of the Land
  • He took over the Czech lands when they were in a terrible shape and made them out to be the most powerful state (Roman Empire) in Europe
  • A founder of the first university in Central Europe (Charles University in Prague), Prague’s Charles Bridge and other magnificent structures [click to continue…]

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Tagged as: art, celebrities, Czech beer, history, polls, science, theatre, travel

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The Czechs and the Slovaks show off a the World Expo 2010 / Cesi a Slovaci se chlubi na Expu 2010

201004141425jd1Expo 2010, a traditional exposition of international fairs held since 1851, is being held in Shanghai, China this year. It started just a couple of days ago (May 1st) and it ends on Halloween – October 31st. This year’s World Expo theme is “Better city – better life“, making it the most expensive exposition in the history of world’s fairs. It was also built on the largest world’s fair site ever at 5.28 square km.

More than 190 countries together with about 50 international organizations have registered to participate in the Shanghai World Expo and more than 100 million visitors are expected to visit it during these upcoming months. [click to continue…]

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Tagged as: science

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Are Czechs smarter than Americans? /Jsou Cesi chytrejsi nez Americane?

idiot_v_genius google imageRemember we had that heated discussion in one of my posts about  Americans and their poor knowledge of geography? You guys ended up leaving 102 (!!) comments! Jamie was one of those involved commentators who kept pursuing the idea that there is NO difference between us and the Americans as far as general knowledge goes. He also promised to send me a research paper on exactly this issue and he kept his word! Here is most of the article, although I could not fit in all of the questions. But you get the idea..

CZ: Pamatujete si , jak jsem jednou psala clanek o Americanech a o jejich spatnych znalostech zemepisu? Vyvolal takovou diskuzi, ze jsme skoncili se 102 komenty!!! Jednim z komentatoru byl Jamie, ktery tvrdil, ze vseobecne znalosti Cechu a Americanu jsou na stejne urovni. Take nam slibil odborny clanek, ktery jeho hypotezu pry potvrzuje. Jamie dodrzel slovo a clanek poslal. Zde je ho vetsina, ale vsechny otazky se mi tam bohuzel vmestnat nepovedlo.

OK, WHO IS SMARTER, WE OR THEY?

Author: Vladimír Kajlík

Periodically, readers are showered with newspapers articles decrying progressive decline if not outright abysmal state of American public education. The conclusion, usually supported by various sorts of statistical “knowledge surveys”, provides presumably ample evidence for such a decline. There would be not much to report if we just assembled such articles from Europe and America to state the facts and to confirm assumed trends. [click to continue…]

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Tagged as: school, science, statistics

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Platzek – the “ever-stimulating Bohemian” / Placzek – “neustale stimulujici Bohem”

atomic bomb www.radio.cz imageDoes the name Georg Placzek ring the bell? No? Don’t feel bad because it is a name unknown to many Czechs. Mr. Placzek is known mostly in America, since he was (the only Czech!) present for the detonation of the 1st nuclear bomb, which he had also helped to build.

Radio Prague wrote a very nice overview of Placzek’s life and you will be surprised to find out in what ways was he connected to names like Charles Darwin, Neils Bohr, Otto Frish and other famous scientists (click here to read the complete article).

CZ: Rika vam neco jmeno Georg Placzek? Ne? Nebojte se, nejste sami; malokomu z Cechu toto jmeno neco rika. Georg byl znamy zejmena v Americe, kam v roce 1945 emigroval. O par mesicu pozdeji byl jako jediny Cech pritomen u detonace prvni atomove bomby. To ale neni vsechno, byl totiz take jeji spolutvurce.

Radio Praha o nem napsala moc zajimavy clanek, kde se take dovite, jakym zpusobem byl spojeny se jmeny jako je Charles Darwin, Neils Bohr, Otto Frish a dalsimi veleznamymi vedci.

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Tagged as: celebrities, science

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Children’s Tylenol study done in the Czech Republic / Cesi vedci zkoumali detsky Tylenol

baby-vaccination google imageMy friend  came across this article in a local newspaper. It releases medical study results about children’s Tylenol done in the Czech Republic. It’s pretty interesting – especially if you have small kids:

(PS: click on the article to enlarge the size of the letters)
CZ: Tento clanek nasla moje kamaradka v mistnich novinach. Lekarska studie o detskem Tylenolu byla provedena v Ceske Republice a vysledky ukazuji, ze tato droga muze snizit efekty ockovani, jestlize ho date svym detem bud hned pred nebo hned po one injekci.

(PS: kliknete na clanek, aby bylo pismo citelene)
[click to continue…]

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Tagged as: children, healh, science

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History of Slovaks in America (part II) /Historie Slovaku v Americe (cast 2.)

www.loc.gov.com image (FOR PART I CLICK HERE)

Do you know, what the first official Slovak organization in the US was? It was  Jednota (or The First Catholic Slovak Union of America), founded in Cleveland as early as 1890. Early after that The National Slovak Society (Narodni slovensky spolok) was founded in Pittsburgh. This time the organization was nondenominational and it still exists today. Its founder, Peter Rovnianek, had such a patriotic spirit that he also established a new Slovak community in Arkansas (about 300 people) and gave it a clever name – the Slovaktown (it looks like the town doesn’t exist anymore, however, since I tried to google it and I got only the ‘historical’ map of the place). [click to continue…]

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Tagged as: history, science, Slovakia

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Chernobyl “celebrated” its 22nd anniversary /Cernobyl “slavil” sve 22. vyroci

April of this year “celebrated” the 22nd anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster (1986)  – the worst nuclear power plant accident in history. Although we know that the Russians were performing some experiments, till this day no one really knows what the possible causes of the explosion were but everyone would soon found out about the after effects. Since Russia didn’t bother to notify the rest of the world, Europe found out about this “little” accident when the radiation levels set off alarms at the Forsmark nuclear Power Plant in Sweden. As far as  Czechoslovakia goes, the first signs of an approaching radiation cloud were signaled by the power plan in Dukovany. [click to continue…]

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Tagged as: history, nature, science

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A brief glence on the Czech scientists in exhile / Kratky pohled na ceske vedce v exilu

chemistry yahoo image There is a new interesting Czech book out there called “The Czech scientists in exile” and Radio Praha just recently published a shortened version of couple of those people’s biographies. For the sake of space I shortened their already shortened version even more but it is still a VERY interesting reading…

Josef Michl (Boulder, CO)

Why do people call him the “renaissance chemist”? Because Josef excels not only in theory but also in hands-on research work. He is currently also the most cited Czech-born researcher out there, having been cited about 15,000 times in various research articles. Another reason why they call him that nickname is that he teaches in 6 different languages but can get by speaking Japanese as well. [click to continue…]

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Tagged as: Canada, celebrities, Czech Americans, Czech Canadians, science

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Bird flue vaccine developed in Czech / Vakcina proti ptaci chripce vyrobena v Cecach

bird google imageA new vaccine for a potential avian flu pandemic has been recently developed in a Czech town Bohumile. The US-owned production company is called Baxter International and their new “mirracle child” vaccine, Celvapan, has been more promising than any other such vaccines. Why? Because the researchers decided to use monkey cells instead of the traditional use of hen’s eggs. [click to continue…]

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Tagged as: good news, science

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Scuba divers from Brno immortalized / Potapeci z Brna zvecneni v…

scuba diving yahoo image5 brave guys from Brno (Czech Republic) will be soon immortalized in the Guinness book of world records. They all scuba-dive for living and one day they decided to take it up a notch and stay underwater for 1 hour with just ONE oxygen bomb. What does’ that mean? That means that each one of them could take only one breath from the oxygen tank per minute. Can you imagine to take only 60 breaths in one hour? [click to continue…]

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Tagged as: science, sports, weird stuff

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