9 things you didn’t know about Czech Republic

Although the groundwork that lead to the invention and creation of contact lenses was done elsewhere, modern soft contact lenses were the outcome of the work of two Czechs: Drahoslav Lim and Otto Wichterle.

Alberto Moravia changed his surname from the Jewish surname Pincherle. His paternal grandfather was a moravian Czech. Alberto thought he wouldn’t stand a chance to break through the Italian literary scene with his real, somewhat funny, surname.

World famed Italian writer and legendary lover Giacomo Casanova spent the last years of his life at Waldstein’s castle in Duchov (Bohemia) where he worked as a librarian, wrote his most famous book (The Story of My Life) and died at the age of 73.

As you can’t talk about Italians without mentioning food, it’s hard to talk about Czechs without pulling beer in the discussion. Until 1839 the normal style of beer, brewed after the German tradition, was dark and cloudy. Then the Bavarian brewer Josef Groll, who had already been experimenting by bottom fermenting beer was hired to work at the Plzen’s town brewery. A mix of Plzen’s soft waters, paler malts, better hop clones and this new bottom fermenting technique gave birth to the world’s first clear beer, which is still one of the best.

People (like me for example) sometimes forget that until 1918 there was no Czechoslovakia. The whole region here was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; so it should be of little surpirse that, a number of famous Austrian people was, in fact, born within today’s Czech borders. One of these is none other than the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, born in Příbor in Moravia.

Meine Prager verstehen mich (My Praguers understand me) this is what Amadeus Mozart said of Prague, a city that brought him luck and support as opposed to Vienna. The relationship between Mozart and Prague has very deep roots and Don Giovanni, one of his masterpiece, was premiered in Prague in 1787.

The word robot was invented by the Czech writer Karel Čapek, who later credited his brother Josef (a famous cartoonist) for coming up with it. Karel wrote the play Rossum’s Universal Robots about a factory producing robots and explained that he wanted a name for these creatures that had something to do with the latin labor (work) and his brother suggested roboti (from the Slavic word robota, meaning labor).

Ivana Trump, or Ivana Marie Zelníčková Winklmayr was born in the town of Zlin, Czech Republic, and was even selected as an Olympic athlete in the Czech Ski Team. This gave her the opportunity, even during communism, to travel outside Czech Republic, where she met here first husband (a Canadian citizen). Eventually she moved to Montreal, then to New York, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Jakub Kryštof Rad was the director of a sugar factory whose wife got injured while trying to cut sugar loafs in smaller pieces; she then suggested he do something about it and the sugar cubes were born.

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3 Responses to 9 things you didn’t know about Czech Republic

  1. roclafamilia says:

    Helpful blog, bookmarked the website with hopes to read more!

  2. mackdaniel says:

    this was a really nice post, thanks

  3. Boldy says:

    ЎHola! Super post, tienen que marcarlo en Digg

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