Resumo de Book Of Facts - Reader's Digest

GREAT CITIES

COOK?S COTTAGE- MAYBE

?Captain Cook?s cottage?- now in Melbourne?s Fitzroy gardens in Australia,- was originally built in Yorkshire, England. The English explorer and navigator Captain James Cook landed at Botany Bay in 1770. But the cottage got to Melbourne only in 1934, when it was shipped to Australia form England.
Originally, the cottage stood at Great Ayton, in North Yorkshire. It was built by Cook?s father in 1775. But by then the son was 27 and had been at sea for about ten years- so it?s unlikely that he ever actually lived in the cottage, although he may well have slept there when visiting his parents.

CIRCUS COLLAR
Piccadilly in London get its name from ornamental collars caked ?piccadills?, which used to be made in the area by a 17th- century tailor named Robert Baker. Baker built himself a grand house. Piccadilly Hall, with the fortune he made, and the name spread to the whole neighborhood.

NAMED AFTER A GAME

The grandest street in London?s West End, Pall Mall, is built on the site of a long green where Charles I played ?paille maille?, a fashionable game that was the forerunner of croquet. After Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, he replaced the old pall-mall green with a new on running parallel to it- and the new green later became the site of The Mall, which links Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square.

THE 853 km BOOKSHELF

The world?s largest library, in Washington DC, was re-established after British troops fired the American capital in 1814, and burnt every book in the original library, US President Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, donated 6487 of his own books to start the present Library of Congress.
The huge library now contains more than 20 million books. 10 million prints and photographs and 4 million atlases and maps. They are housed in three buildings, with 26 hectares (64 acres) of floor space and 853 km (530miles) of shelving. The library is open to the public.

VOLCANO BROLLIES

People tend to carry umbrellas even in fine weather in the Japanese seaport
of Kagoshima, on the island of Kyushu. They use the umbrellas for protection against showers of line ash that descend on the city, blown over form the nearby volcano of Sakurajima. The volcano itself was a small island until 1914, when a ash to link it with the main island.

PILES OF STRENGTH
Exactly 13,659 piles were driven into firm clay to form the foundations of the Dutch Amsterdam. The city takes its name from the Amstel River- it means ?dam or dyke on the Amstel?. The river was dammed in 1240 and the city was first mentioned in a charter of 1275.
Its canals were built to drain and reclaim precious low- lying land- unlike those of Venice, when were built simply to ease travel around the city.

BRIDGE OF NO RETURN

The bridge of sighs, most famous of the 400 bridges in Venice, Italy, connects the Doge?s Palace to the old state prisons and the place of execution. It was built in 1600 and is believed to have got its name from the sights of the condemned. The designer was Antonio da Ponte, who also designed the city?s Rialto Bridge.

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