From a country with far too many lakes to a bird named after far too many countries.
Finland has 187,888 lakes
That’s according to the Finland Promotion Board. That’s undeniably an awful lot of lakes, but it makes me wonder whose job it was to count all of them. And what’s the difference between a puddle, a pond and a lake?
Also, is this really such a great boast? Because there comes a point where having that many lakes essentially means your country is one giant swamp…
The world’s largest uncontacted tribe is under threat
In the Peruvian Amazon, the Mashco Piro people are generally regarded as the world’s largest uncontacted Indigenous group. They’re not completely uncontacted – there is a history of massacre and enslavement, while there have been reports of the Mashco Piro venturing out of their territory in search of food. But they’re more-or-less cut off from the world.
That could be changing, according to a Guardian report, loggers are encroaching on Mascho Piro territory on the Peruvian side, and new roads are a threat from the Brazilian side. Clashes, it’s feared, could lead to increased contact and the transmission of diseases that the Mashco Piro have no immunity to.
No-one agrees on how many steps the Leaning Tower of Pisa has
I tried to find out how many steps there are inside the Leaning Tower of Pisa for an article. This, it turns out, is a thankless task.
Numbers quoted on the first page of Google include 294, 296, 257, 251 and 273 and 269.
In these circumstances, it’s usually better to go with the official source. But the Opera Della Primaziale Pisana, the organisation that runs the Pisa Cathedral and surrounding buildings, can’t even agree with itself. Depending on which page of its website you visit, the Leaning Tower of Pisa has either 251 steps or 273 steps.
Still, what do you expect from people who can’t even build their tower straight?
The beef carpaccio and bellini cocktail were invented by the same person
Giuseppe Cipriani founded one of the world’s most notorious rip-off bars – Harry’s Bar in Venice. However, in-between fleecing gullible tourists a scarcely credible amount for a couple of drinks, it seems Giuseppe was a busy boy.
Cipriani lays claim to both the beef carpaccio and the bellini cocktail. The carpaccio was supposedly invented for a countess who couldn’t eat cooked meat, then named after an artist whose exhibition was the talk of Venice in 1950.
The Bellini was also named after a painter, but created two years earlier when Cipriani developed a taste for white peaches and pureed them with prosecco.
The English and Portuguese words for one bird are two different countries
The bird, originally from North America, that we call a turkey? Well, the Portuguese call it a peru.
