II. THE CZECH REPUBLIC AND THE EU
CZECH RECORDS! DID YOU KNOW THAT… - the first sugar cube was made in Dačice? In 1829, the brothers František and Tomáš Grebner established a sugar refinery – using sugar beet – in Kostelní Vydří near Dačice. After realising that neither the climate nor the soil in the area was suitable for growing sugar beet, František decided to establish a refinery that formed raw sugar into various shapes and textures – icing sugar, caster sugar, coarse sugar, sugar loaves, sugar cubes, and chips. In 1840, Swiss-born businessman Jakub Kryštof Rad became the director of the Dačice refinery. His wife gave him the idea and in 1841 he manufactured the first 300 white and pink cubes of beet sugar. Rad moulded them in an apparatus he himself had invented. Thus an invention was born, whose practical use was soon to be discovered by the whole world. More at www.dacice-mesto.cz
- the most famous Czech song is the Beer Barrel Polka? The Beer Barrel Polka, or Roll Out the Barrels, is probably the best known Czech song in the world. It has become popular in many countries during the Second World War. It was composed in 1927 by Jaromír Vejvoda as an instrumental piece of music. He adapted it in 1929, and in 1934 Václav Zeman wrote the Czech lyrics and called it Škoda lásky (Wasted Love). It became a popular song with the allied armies as well as Czechoslovak pilots in the Battle of Britain. Its popularity is testified also by the fact that it accompanied astronauts on the Discovery Space Shuttle; it was also played in the popular series M.A.S.H. The Vejvoda family archive records 14 names of the song and 27 versions of lyrics in various languages. More at www.j-vejvoda.cz.
- many inventions and discoveries such as contact lenses were made by Czech scientists? Otto Wichterle, Czech chemist and the founder of the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry in Prague, was the inventor of soft contact lenses. He is also considered the founder of macromolecular chemistry and is the author of about 150 inventions. In 1993, one of the planetoids was named after Wichterle. The physicist and chemist Jaroslav Heyrovský was the first Czech scientist to win the Nobel Prize. It was awarded to him in 1959 for the discovery of the polarographic method and its use in electroanalytical chemistry. The outstanding Czech orientalist Bedřich Hrozný, who lived at the turn of the 20th century, became famous for deciphering the ancient Hittite language. In November 1915, he announced that he was able to read the writing of the ancient Hittites, the official language of the Hittite empire. The first sentence he deciphered was: “Now you shall eat bread, and water you shall drink…”
- the first radioactive spa was established in Jáchymov? The Jáchymov Spa is a very famous spa centre, where the first spa with radioactive waters was
The Czech Republic – Your Business Partner in the EU
2021
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