Your Wikipedia find of the week

[Mr Larrington]

Chicken Tax explains why USAnian vans are so crap.  One Jamie Kitman, who combined motoring journalism with being road manager for Nirvana-endorsed Beat Combo the Meat Puppets, reported his astonishment when he first got his hands on one of the first rebadged M-B Sprinters to cross the Atlantic.

[Efrogwr]

That in Germany "welsch" (from the same root as "Welsh") is applied to the French, but In Switzerland it means Italian. Meanwhile, in Tyrol and South Tyrol they call Italians Italian.


Allegedly.

[clarion]

Doesn't the word derive from one meaning 'foreign'?

[T42]

In Germany I had a colleague called Welsch who had a very deep voice.  When strangers phoned in the conversation usually began:

Welsch: Welsch.
Caller: Guten Tag, Herr Welsch.
Welsch: Frau.


In 30 years of working in Germany or with Germans I never heard anyone refer to the French as "welsch". It was usually die blöde Franzosen.

[Jakob W]

ISTR Froschfresser as a chauvinist pejorative...

[Cudzoziemiec]

Same in Polish – żabojady

[Efrogwr]

Doesn't the word derive from one meaning 'foreign'?

Yes.

[Efrogwr]

In 30 years of working in Germany or with Germans I never heard anyone refer to the French as "welsch". It was usually die blöde Franzosen.

That does seem more likely.

They might be archaic usages, or, as this is Wikipedia, I might be channelling complete bollocks.

[Jakob W]

Thinking about it, Kauderwelsch is the German equivalent of 'Double-Dutch'.

[benborp]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Kilda,_Scotland

For some reason stoic pragmatism amuses me. Especially when the outcome can be as variable as the St Kilda mailboat.

Even in the late 19th century, the islanders could communicate with the rest of the world only by lighting a bonfire on the summit of Conachair and hoping a passing ship might see it, or by using the "St Kilda mailboat". This was the invention of John Sands, who visited in 1877. During his stay, a shipwreck left nine Austrian sailors marooned there, and by February supplies were running low. Sands attached a message to a lifebuoy salvaged from the Peti Dubrovacki and threw it into the sea. Nine days later it was picked up in Birsay, Orkney, and a rescue was arranged. The St Kildans, building on this idea, would fashion a piece of wood into the shape of a boat, attach it to a bladder made of sheepskin, and place in it a small bottle or tin containing a message. Launched when the wind came from the north-west, two-thirds of the messages were later found on the west coast of Scotland or, less conveniently, in Norway.

[Salvatore]

That in Germany "welsch" (from the same root as "Welsh") is applied to the French, but In Switzerland it means Italian. Meanwhile, in Tyrol and South Tyrol they call Italians Italian.


Allegedly.

See also Walloon - another non-germanic people neighbouring germanics.

[Pingu]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banovići

Banovići (Cyrillic: There is no cyrillic in Banovići Fuck you) is a town and municipality in northeastern Bosnia and Herzegovina.

[mrcharly-YHT]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Kay_of_the_Milky_Way

Since 1965, sculptures of the winning Princess Kay and other finalists have been carved, one per day, at the Minnesota State Fair. Recent butter sculptures have been carved out of a 90-pound block of Grade A butter, in a walk-in, glass-walled refrigerator. The butter is manufactured by Associated Milk Producers in New Ulm, Minnesota. The butter carving booth is one of the most popular exhibits at the Fair. The carving of the butter sculpture takes 6–8 hours per finalist. For nearly 40 years, Linda Christensen has sculpted the Princesses' butter sculptures. Princesses take their butter sculpture home with them at the end of the Fair.

What do they do with them? Even after sculpting, that's got to be 60lb of butter.

[Peter]

Spread themselves thin?

[mrcharly-YHT]

Spread themselves thin?

Very good. That belongs in the bad jokes thread.

[T42]

Harrison G. Dyar, who collected 500,000 different varieties of mosquito and was married to two women at the same time, maintaining two families and raising five children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Gray_Dyar,_Jr.

The 500,000 mozzies comes from an article about him in Nature.

[Andrij]

Salekhard–Igarka Railway, aka Трансполярная магистраль - Transpolar Mainline.
Some more pictures can be seen here.

[Mr Larrington]

Salekhard–Igarka Railway, aka Трансполярная магистраль - Transpolar Mainline.
Some more pictures can be seen here.

IIRC TV's Chris Tarrant was up there in his most recent series of Extreme Railway Journeys.

[T42]

Arthur Ransome, of Swallows and Amazons fame, was married to Trotsky's secretary.

[ElyDave]

following the 6-nations thread I looked up Phil De Glanville, absolutely no mention of the New Zealand face shredding incident, which I find surprising.

Wayne Shelford's on the other hand has the Battle of Nantes very prominent

[mrcharly-YHT]

Arthur Ransome, of Swallows and Amazons fame, was married to Trotsky's secretary.

There is a book about that, Blood Red, Snow White. A cracking read.

[T42]

Ahah! Ta.

[Efrogwr]

That there is an International Union of Railways classification system for locomotive wheel arrangements.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Arthur Ransome, of Swallows and Amazons fame, was married to Trotsky's secretary.

There is a book about that, Blood Red, Snow White. A cracking read.

Ooh, I'll look that up. He was also one of the first front-line war correspondents, on the Eastern Front in WW1 for the Times, which is presumably how he ended up with Trotsky's secretary.

[Kim]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_words_having_different_meanings_in_American_and_British_English:_A%E2%80%93L

What it says on the tin.  What it lacks in accuracy it makes up for in scope.  Plenty of learn-something-new-every-day fodder there.