They did love collecting titles. The kings of England also claimed the title of King of France until 1802, even though they lost the very last enclave on French soil in 1558: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_claims_to_the_French_t...
The current King of Sweden decided that he had enough and dropped all except King of Sweden from his.
Ever since the Kalmar Union, Denmark has had the Swedish national emblem the Three Crowns as part of their Royal Coat of Arms. The union ended in 1523.
For my 30th birthday a group of friends and I walked the perimeter of Manhattan island. Except for a section along the Harlem river, there are paths along the water the entire way so it required almost no navigation. We picked up and dropped off friends along way that only wanted to do parts of the walk. And we stopped at several bars too, meeting other friends that just wanted to have a drink. We started at 8am and…
Manhattan is my favorite city to walk in alone. Manhattan can be enjoyed without ever bringing your gaze to the ground level. The diversity of architecture means that every block feels fresh. World renowned classics, the sheer scale of central park and the greatest hits of art-deco. Pair that with new spots like the Highline, Hudson yards, Little island.... and it keeps on giving. And then you come back down to earth…
They did love collecting titles. The kings of England also claimed the title of King of France until 1802, even though they lost the very last enclave on French soil in 1558: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_claims_to_the_French_t...
There was a recent incident with the first printing of the Book of Common Prayer (the Church of England's official prayer book) after the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The BCP includes both references to the current monarch, and to Queen Elizabeth I who ordered it to be compiled. Unfortunately someone at the publisher didn't realize this, and did a find and replace of (among other things) "King" for "Queen" and "Charl…
Reminds me of "Parsing Html The Cthulhu Way" [0] except for the semantic (meaning) layer instead of the syntactic layer.
how are people able to walk 100kms in 4 days with no rest days. i just can walk 8 kms every day :(
A lot depends on the terrain and the condition of the trail/road. (Pavement does tend to be a bit harder on your feet than a nice dirt trail.)
25km (~15mi) per day on level terrain on a path in good condition is a good walk but not anything exceptional. If there are ups and downs and the trail is rock and rough that's a whole different story.
I've now completed several multi-day walks. At some point I plan to walk across Britain on the Coast to Coast path. I've walked across Spain and Gran Canaria. Maybe I should write those up on my blog...
There are a lot of good long distance walks in the UK. Not having done the coast-to-coast personally, I will say I've heard from various people that the part in the middle of the country is less interesting than the two ends given the highways etc.
> TBH the nonsensical nature of monarchy works out for Australia, as it costs essentially nothing and sort of acts as a ground strap to make the idea of “head of state” rather irrelevant. Just compare to countries like France or USA where the Head of State gets capital letters and is a person with actual power. > Next best would be a president like in Germany who is basically a nonentity with less power than a GG. Me…
The concept under description is effectively Bagehot's "dignified" vs. "efficient" parts of government. The head of state being the "dignified", the personification of the nation, and the head of government being the "efficient", the wielder of political power. I generally favor the American-style presidential system over the British-style parliamentary system, but I think one flaw of the American one is that it comb…
The 5e's constitution was designed for De Gaulle, so de facto, the French Président wields all the power, even quite a bit during "cohabitation". The PM is mainly there is be blamed for things and to manage the legislature for the president.
The kings of England also claimed to be Kings of France until 1800.
In 1800 England was closer to becoming a department of France, than France joining a personal union under England :-)) Of course, life turned out differently, but aristocratic claims are quite crazy. Who's the current King of Jerusalem, again? :-D
There's a Hohenzollern (futilely) trying to claw back the assets of Prussia.
Had a roadtrip in Europe 15 years ago or so with my wife. We planned to stop in Luxembourg for a lunch, but because we failed to find a parking we had to leave the country
I'm kind of surprised, it was and still is a very car-centric city. The very centre can be busy but these days, with a smart phone you could easily find parking within 500m or so.
Eager to read similar about Lichtenstein, Andorra, San Marino.
I live in San Marino, let me chime in! The historic center, which is called San Marino Città, is a gorgeous medieval town and it's also part of UNESCO heritage. I definitely recommend a trip there, if you happen to be somewhere near. When I went to school there, I regularly missed the bus so I had the chance of doing a few walks down to my home. It's a bit steep, since the town is located at the top of mount Titano a…
When I tried to buy stamps direct from SM back in the 70s, and addressed mail to the SM post office, my local (USA) post office did not believe that there was a country with that name. He went thru their giant post office reference book and hey there it was !