- About queen Urraca The Reckless of Spain (Leon, Castille, and Galicia, but she claimed all Spain) born in 1081ish. She was married at the age of 8 to 13 to Raymond of Burgundy and at 28ish to Alfonso I of Aragon and Navarre who was a brute. She divorced him, and ruled alone as Europe’s first definitely not fictional and well-documented queen regnant. Given a nasty invasive ex, a scheming half-sister and a rebellious son she did quite well.
- That Duchy of Burgundy and County of Burgundy are two neighboring locations
- About Philetus, rendered immobile by his teacher the wizard Hermogenes but freed by St. James
- About Queen Lupa who lived in a cave with a dragon for a neighbor, fattened pigs as if by magic, and did not wish St. James to be buried in her neighborhood
- That the horrible not-down-to-the floor toilet doors were invented in 1904 by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Larkin Building in Buffalo, NY to make cleaning easier.
- That after WWII the historic center of Poland was restored according to the detailed paintings of Canaletto’s nephew Bernardo Bellotto https://notesfrompoland.com/2022/09/21/bellotto-the-18th-century-artist-who-helped-warsaw-rise-from-the-ashes-of-wwii/
- That Canaletto-style cityscapes are called “vedute”
- About a very tragic fate of a taxi driver (from Harper’s Bazaar article by Tanya Gold), who loves his native town. It’s a beautiful town. It has a castle, and a waterfall, and a children’s amusement park, and a good ice hockey team. And he wants to show all of this to people and to have them appreciate his home town for the lovely town it is. But the tourists just go from the train station to the extermination camp and no one stops to look at the waterfall. It’s hard being a patriot of Oświęcim. “No one calls me Albert the bridge-builder” /s https://harpers.org/archive/2024/09/my-auschwitz-vacation-tanya-gold-tourism/