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Category General Knowledge

When the lynx was seen again in Europe?

The lynx is a large, wild, feline animal found in many parts of central Europe. It has unusually large paws, a mottled tawny to cream coat and a black-tipped tail.

The lynx lived in the Alps until half a century ago: the last time this creature is known to have been captured was at the beginning of this century, near Chieri in Piedmont. The animal has not been heard of since.

It is more likely to be the clearance of all trees from the mountains which have caused its disappearance than the fact that it has been hunted down. A deer which had been completely ravaged as if by a lynx, was recently found in a Swiss forest, where there were also impressions in the fresh snow which scientists have identified as tracks typical of his feline creature.

The lynx is now being bred in zoos and then released into the wild to build up its numbers. It usually lives in dense forests where it can find it favorite prey, the roe-buck and the stag.

 

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Where you can find the land of the tulips?

The tulip is undoubtedly one of the best known and most popular flowers in the world. Its vivid colours and the simple lines make it a small masterpiece, much prized in both gardens and homes.

The ancient origin of the tulip is unknown, but we have much information on its introduction into Europe. It was the TURKS who brought this flower to the West some 400 years ago. The name tulip means ‘turban’ which the flower is thought to resemble.

There is probably no other flower which has been given such an enthusiastic welcome or spread so quickly throughout Europe. Within the space of a few years, the craze for tulips grew into ‘Tulipomania’, reaching its height in Holland.

Certain rare varieties fetched astronomical prices: by 1610 some tulip bulbs were worth as much as an ale-house or a mill. One bulb was paid for with a new carriage, complete with two horses, another was exchanged for 12 acres of land. Materials and lace were decorated with designs of tulips. This craze lasted for almost half a century.

 

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Where the horned viper lives?

The horned viper belongs to the reptile family. Dispersed throughout Yugoslavia and some regions of Austria these vipers can also be found in Italy on the eastern Alps. They are easily distinguishable from the usual vipera aspis and vipera berus by a horn, sometimes growing to a length of 5 centimetres, which sprouts out from the tip of the head. The horned viper prefers limestone or very stoney ground, and loves hot climates. It moves rather slowly, particularly during the day, when it sits lazily in the sun, digesting its captured prey which it swallows whole. But, if disturbed, the viper rears up emitting a hissing noise and sinking into the flesh of its enemy two poisonous fangs which are normally kept folded and hidden in a sac in its palate. In this respect, its behaviour is quite similar to that of the other European vipers.

 

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Who began flying?

Man has always longed to fly. In the late fifteenth century, Leonardo da Vinci was working on the problem of flying and a century later, a Jesuit priest from Brescia in northern Italy, suggested using the ascending force of the lightest gases present in the air. In 1782, the Neopolitan, Tibero Cavallo, filled a balloon with hydrogen and carried out some laboratory tests.

In France, a balloon full of hot air was publicly launched on 4 June 1783 at Annonay by the Montgolfier brothers, Etienne and Joseph. They repeated the experiment with a larger balloon at Versailles on 19 September 1783 when a hen, a sheep and a duck were the first living creatures to go up in a ‘Montgolfier balloon’. On 21 November the Marquis of Arlandes and Pilatre de Rozier, flew across from Paris, on board a hot air balloon.

The following month, December 1783, hydrogen was substituted for hot air. The physical J.H.C Charles with M.N Robert made the first manned flight using hydrogen.

 

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Where does the boar live?

Boars, the ancient forefathers of the domestic pig, have long been extinct in Britain but they still live in fairly large numbers in marshy, wooland areas in Spain, Austria, Russia and Germany. Some species can also be found in northern Africa and central and northern Asia.

Because of their great strength, speed and ferocity when at bay boars have always been hunted by man. In some parts of Europe and India they are still hunted, usually with the aid of dogs. They have not died out, however, mainly because they are prolific animals, the female producing between five and eight off spring at a time. Boars have sociable natures and live in flocks in dense, wooded areas. They feed on acorns, beechnuts, and chestnuts and occasionally small hard-shelled animals, worms, small birds or mice. They even eat serpents as they are immune to their poison.

In order to get rid of parasites, they wrap themselves in the mud.

 

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Where you can find the corkoak tree?

Cork, a material used mainly for bottle-stoppers, insulation and floor coverings, is produced from a special type of evergreen oak tree which grows, sometimes wild, in the coastal regions of the Mediterranean.

The cork-oak has a thick, dark foliage, formed from noded branches, covered with tough, oval leaves which are small and slightly jagged.

Its thick tall trunk is completely wrapped in an outer bark of cork which is covered with find brown grooves. The tree is first tripped of its cork, which will be rather hard and knobby, when it is about sixteen years old. It is then stripped again every nine to ten years, depending on its location, and each time it will produce a good, light cork just over three centimeters thick.

After about 150 years, these trees cease to produce good quality cork and they are then felled.

 

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Where you can find a town made of salt?

Beneath the city of Wieliczka in Poland lies one of the most extraordinary sights in the world; a subterranean town made of salt.

This town is in the heart of a salt mine which goes down to over 300 metres below ground and has more than 112 kilometres of tunnels. All the elements that make up the town are built from salt, that is from sodium chloride in a crystalline state, which has a consistency similar to that of porous stone. Everything is made of rock-salt, from the pillars to the lamp-posts, from the streets to the bridges. There is everything here that you would find in any small town: a church decorated with basreliefs, a railway station, a throneroom, a ballroom, small lakes, wide specious streets. All that is the work of the miners who through decades of patient labour succeeded in completing labour succeeded in completing this colossal task.

Although there are other towns made of salt in both Poland and Austria, Wieliczka is the most complete and most perfect of them all. The salt mines there have been worked for over nine centuries.

 

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Where is island of fire?

One of the most active volcanic areas in the world is Iceland: in addition to craters which have been dormant since time memorial, the island has some thirty active volcanoes.

Iceland possesses other volcanic features, such as thermal springs and solfatara (which emit sulphur and water vapour gases); the most notable are the geysers which are jets of water at a high temperature.

The Icelanders have taken advantage of these hot springs: they have directed them into a system of pipes which heat homes, swimming pools and greenhouses. Since 1943 the whole city of Reykjavik has thus been able to solve its heating problems.

 

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Where is the famous valley of the roses?

The valley of the roses’ could be the title of a novel or a romantic film, one of many fantasies; instead it actually exists in Bulgaria.

It is a narrow valley (enclosed by two mountain chains and crossed by the Tundza, the principal tributary of the river Maritza) which at harvest time becomes a sea of roses, a unique spectacle. Until the height of summer every morning at the first signs of dawn the petal pickers fill their large sacks and hurry to deliver their product to be processed before the petals lose their fragrance.

Rose essence, known and appreciated in all parts of the world, is extracted from the petals.

 

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Where is the land of lakes?

Looking at a map, Finland seems like a piece of lace, a tunnel riddled with an infinite number of very characteristic lakes.

Finland has, quite rightly, been called the land of lakes: in fact, from the smallest, which is virtually a puddle, to the largest, the Saimma situated in the south, it has tens of thousands of lakes which cover 9.4 percent of the country. This Lake District with its inland archipelagos has been less effected by outside influences than the coastal regions.

Someone once said that there are two dominant colours in Finland, blue and green; the blue of the lakes and the green of the forests. If we add to these colours the white of the snow that for a good part of the year covers Finnish territory, we have named the three national colours of Finland. The snow feeds innumerable rivers which often link the lakes.

One feature which may seem strange in country as flat as that in southern Finland is the way the lakes are on different levels. Sometimes characteristic waterfalls, which the Finns have used for the production of electric energy, are formed by a river flowing rapidly from one lake to another.

 

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