Brass Tacks Trivia

In Russia, trivia blogs you July 30, 2009

HOW TO VIEW THIS BLOG: Read the questions, then highlight the area between the > < to reveal the answers, then click “more” for the explanations.

1. In what part of the former Soviet Union did the Chernobyl nuclear disaster occur?

Answer: >Ukraine<

2. In 1991, the Russian city of Leningrad changed its name back to what?

Answer: >Saint Petersburg<

3. Which Roman Emperor made Sunday a religious holiday??

Answer: >Constantine<

Explanations:

1. For a while there, it was “The Ukraine.” Then, they dropped the “The” because they realized how lame it was. The break up of the USSR was a boon to all (thank you Gorbachev). Russia was allowed to remain as the largest country by area, and we got a lot of spin off countries, including Ukraine. A lot of people think most of the “stan” countries are in the Middle East, like Pakistan and Afghanistan, but the USSR churned out a bunch of –stans, like Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and the one everyone through was made up just for the Borat movie but is actually real, Kazakhstan. Now with 10% more silent H’s. Then we have Latvia, where all the Russian hotties live. Georgia, which the U.S. had first. Lithuania, which might as well be in Western Europe, since it does all the Europe stuff. You know, E.U., NATO, immigrating to America, etc. And then there a few others that bring the total to 15. Not bad. But what if you divided your land into 50 smaller regions, and said they would need to follow all the laws of the nation while being able to create laws of their own, too. Now, that’s democracy at work. Oh wait, did I say democracy? I meant bureaucracy. Oh, and the Chernobyl thing was in 1986.

2. When I visited the Wikipedia site, it said “”Leningrad” redirects here.” That’s cute. If stealing “Georgia” wasn’t enough, they decided to steal the name of one of the worst cities in Florida, too. When they rename Armenia to Nashville, I may get suspicious. St. Pete’s (as the locals refer to it) was the capital city of the Russian Empire from 1713-1918 (lot of teens) with the exception of 4 years somewhere in there when the city and country were “on a break.” After the Russian Revolution of 1917, they moved the capital to Moscow, and 7 years later in 1924, they changed the name of the former capital to Leningrad as a rebranding effort to increase tourism, to honor Lenin, and just for miscellaneous Russian dickishness reasons. Apparently, they had buyer’s remorse in 1991 when they decided to rename it back to St. Petersburg. No one could seem to find the damn place, but the street sign business was booming.

3. According to a certain web-based user-content driven encyclopedia, Constantine’s complete Christian name was Caesar Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus. His friends called him “flava flav” for short. Come on, man, that’s a lot of names. And the initials don’t even spell out anything funny. C-F-V-A-C-A. You can’t even make a clever anagram out of that. Constantine was the first Christian Roman Emperor, so he also sometimes goes by the name Constantine I. Any Constantines who may have come before him were too Pagan to be counted. Constantine is known for his many great reforms: religious, monetary, judiciary, etc. But I’m sure you could read all about him on a certain collaborative, non-profit internet encyclopedia project.