Interesting facts about Poland
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Polish, along with other Slavic languages, belongs to the Indo-European group of languages. About 4500 years ago, it was used by the people living in Europe and India. 2,500 years ago a separate Proto-Slavic language emerged. At around the fifth century, it transformed into three subsequent dialects, out of which a number of Slavic languages originated, with Polish being one of them.***
Wiżajny is a village situated furthest to the north-east of Poland. It is considered a 'Polish cold pole' by meteorologists. Wiżajny is famous for its specific microclimate, which is characterized by extremely severe and long winters, cool spring and hot, short summers.***
In the sixteenth century, the edge of the Hel's Peninsula was lit by fires, as it constituted an important landmark on the route to the port of Gdansk. Throught the years, the light appeared on the church tower, and in 1670 the first lighthouse was built. In the nineteenth century the fire-thorns of burning wood were replaced by the rapeseed oil lamps.In 1926 an oil lamp with four lenses was mounted on a lamppost. Before World War II it was replaced by the light bulb. Nowadays, there is a modern radar installed on the lighthouse.
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In 2004, 75 years have passed since the return of the bison to the Bialowieza Forest.Before World War I, there were more than 700 bisons in the area of the Białowieża Forest. After the war, the population was completely exterminated and in 1919, the last bison was killed by poachers. In 1929, bisons of pure blood were brought to a specially prepared area, where their breeding began. Over the years, the population gradually grew, now there are about 350 bisons living in the wild.
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Every time the prayer "Our Father" was uttered, the nobility participating in the mass were taking out their swords from sheaths and were rising them up. The gesture of the raised sword showed readiness to fight in defense of faith.***
The oldest sentence written entirely in Polish, dates back to 1270. It was found in the chronicle written in the Latin language in the monastery in Henryków near Wroclaw The sentence was written by Cistercians and goes - "Daj ać ja pobruszę, a ty pocziwaj" which means "Come, now I'll spin the quern while you rest" -it is said that the Czech called Boguchwał uttered these words to his stout and clumsy wife who was grinding grain.***
Nicolaus Copernicus apart from works referring to astronomy also published one concerning for example a monetary reform. He formulated the thesis of displacing a "better" currency by the "inferior," one and called it the law of Gresham-Copernicus.***
Four out of six Polish Nobel Prize winners have been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature category. In 1905 Henryk Sienkiewicz received the prize for lifetime achievement, in 1924 Wladyslaw Reymont, for his novel "The Peasants", in 1980 Czeslaw Milosz, for his lifetime literary works and in 1996 Wislawa Szymborska, for her achievements in the poetry area.Recommended websites
Czas.net - current time in Poland.Wikipedia - Poland - Poland in Wikipedia encyclopaedia.