The Online Geography Game
Starting January 5th, the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival is an annual festival that takes place in Harbin, China.
There are two main exhibition areas – one is Sun Island that was the location of this week’s contest.
Found the island in the river:
After the hint:
Houston, Texas celebrated “Mauro Hamza Day” on December 26th, 2009. This was the rather obscure holiday chosen for this week.
Mauro Hamza is originally from Cairo, Egypt, and established his fencing academy in Houston – one location can be found in the L-shaped white building. Hamza also served as Fencing Program Coordinator at Rice University from 1998 to 2014 and spent three years serving the Southwest fencing community as volunteer Chairman of the Gulf Coast Division. Mauro was the Egyptian Olympic coach for the men’s and women’s foil teams at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and was the United States Fencing Association Men’s Foil National Coach 2009-2010; then USA Foil Director for Men’s and Women’s National teams in 2010-2011.
There are two locations of the Salle Mauro Fencing Academy in the Houston area.
Found in front of the fencing:
This weeks holiday was Goa Liberation Day, celebrated on December 19th for the overthrow the Portuguese in Goa, India. The location visited was Azad Maidan where a monument to the memory of the Indian soldiers who lost their lives during the 36 hour battle.
Found the location pre-hint:
And after the hint:
And a wave to Gillian B who had the right area, but not the right spot!
December 15th was Zamenhof Day, celebrating the inventor of Esperanto, Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof. Zamenhof was a Jewish ophthalmologist, linguist and the creator of the international language Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language in the world. Zamenhof was born in Bialystok, Poland.
Zamenhof’s goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language to foster world peace and international understanding, and to build a “community of speakers”, as he believed that one could not have a language without such a community.
His original title for the language was simply “the international language” (la lingvo internacia), but early speakers grew fond of the name Esperanto and began to use it as the name for the language just two years after its creation. The name quickly gained prominence and has been used as an official name ever since.
The Ludwik Zamenhof Centre is a city cultural institution established in Bialystok at 19 Warszawska St. upon the motion of the President of the City. It was founded to celebrate the organization of the 94th World Congress of Esperanto that was held in Bialystok.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto
Zamenhof Center:
Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof:
trovita antaŭ la aludo / before the hint:
post la aludo / after the hint:
Stockholm hosts an annual ceremony on December 10th where Nobel Prizes (other than the Peace Prize) are handed out at the Stockholm Concert Hall, followed by a banquet at Stockholm City Hall. Due to the pandemic, the festivities moved to virtual events.
The hint referred to the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize is handed out in Oslo, Norway and not in Stockholm.
Here is a list of the Nobel Prize winners for 2020: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/lists/all-nobel-prizes/
Winning the prize of 2 points:
And after the hint:
Celebrated on December 3rd in the Navarre autonomous region in Spain, Día de Navarra occurs on the anniversary of the death of the region’s patron saint, Saint Francis Xavier.
St Francis Xavier was remarkable in how far he went to spread Christianity. His travels included significant time in India, Japan, and the island nations surrounding China. He was about to travel to China itself when he fell ill and died on December 3, 1552 on this island (which now is part of China). A chapel was built on the site of his death in the mid 1800’s and that chapel was renovated on the 600th anniversary of his birth in 2006.
One of our contestants gave us a link to the outstanding old picture of the chapel:
No one found the site before the hint. After the hint, we got correct responses from:
In August 1975, the Banqiao dam collapsed, creating the third-largest flood in history which affected a total population of 10.15 million and inundated around 30 cities and counties of 12,000 square kilometers (or 3 million acres), with an estimated death toll ranging from tens of thousands to 240,000.
The dam collapse was a result of excessive rainfall associated with Typhoon Nina. Banqaio Dam was the first and largest of 62 dams in Henan province that collapsed, resulting in the massive flooding. The collapse of these dams has been referred to by some journalists as “The deadliest structural failure in history”, yet very few people have ever heard of it. 1975 was a very closeted time for Chinese history – something that could be seen as a failure of the government was simply ignored outside the area that was actually affected. To this day, the disaster is not taught in Chinese schools.
Those who discovered the disaster without much information:
On September 29, 1957, something happened at this site. The most common theory is the cooling system for a tank of liquid nuclear waste failed, the heat caused a chemical reaction similar to an ammonium-nitrate/fuel-oil type explosion. Regardless of what actually caused it, a plume of radioactive debris spread, contaminating a space over 52,000 square km.
Because of the secrecy with which this event was shrouded, and the fact that the cancers and other long-term diseases associated with the contamination are hard to limit to just radioactive exposure, it is impossible to fully count the number of casualties of this disaster. Direct cases of radiation poisoning from this event have been published at 66. Some estimates of the increase of deaths in the contaminated area point to a casualty count of around 8500.
Those who drew back the iron curtain to reveal this spot before the hint were:
and after the hint
The Indian Ocean tsunami that struck on 26 December 2004 was among the worst single-instance mass-casualty events in recorded history. Nearly 230,000 people in 14 countries were killed. The fact that this train wreck, which is the largest single rail disaster in world history by death toll, is but a minuscule portion of that larger death count is jarring.
Before the #50 Matara Express departed the Ambalangoda station, railway officials had been trying desperately to contact the station to get them to halt the train. Unfortunately, everyone at the station was helping process the train, and no one was available to take the call until after it left. When it got to Peraliya, the first waves overtook the tracks and stopped the train. Subsequent waves threw the train around like a leaf in the water, crushing those who tried to shelter behind it. The flooding of the cars drowned nearly all of the passengers.
No one really knows how many died in this tragedy. At least 900 have been identified, but it is thought the total death count may be as high as 1700 or more.
Those who located the site, all before the hint, were:
