1: Spam, a compressed meat from America made up 18% of a Soviet soldier’s diet during WW2 (Great Patriotic War). Over 70% of Red Army soldiers each day were alloted two tins of a mush made of American cornmeal fortified with protein and vitamins designed to give 560 calories per meal....produced in places like Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Michigan and Ohio.
2: Today, dodging the required military draft in Russia is estimated as a business worth 350 million each year in bribes. Contracting fake diseases or enrolling at fictitious universities is the usual way to weasel out. But then you’ll have to bribe all over again, because not serving will impair your chances of finding a job.
3: Every day over 9 MILLION passengers ride the Metro, Moscow's vast underground subway system. In a single day, an average of 9915 trains operate between 5am - 1am, making the New York subway system seem like a minature child's toy.
4: Russia's Prime Minister makes more than the President. The Prime Minister today also gets Russia's VIP seats at the Olympics.
5: McDonalds 700 seat restaurant has already been mentioned, but I'll add that on the day it first opened in Russia, over 5,000 customers were waiting in line for it to open at 5am. By the end of its first day of operation they had served more than 30,000 people, breaking McDonald's system-wide opening day records. Today this restaurant continues to hold the record as the busiest McDonald's restaurant in the world.
6: Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (Храм Христа Спасителя) "Khram Khrista Spasitelya" Cathedral holds around 5,000-6,000 at one time and is the tallest Eastern Orthodox church in the world and currently the largest operating Orthodox Church in the world. It was blown up by Stalin during his drive to drive religion out of Soviet life and rebuilt in the 1990s.
7: Red Square isn't red, nor is that its name. While the Kremlin walls near it have been painted red (originally they were white), the area we know as "Red Square" is neither red or square for that matter. Красная площадь would have normally been translated as "Beautiful Plaza" from the Russian language as it was used in the 17th Century (when its name changed from Trinity Plaza to Beautiful Plaza) and the word for red today derives from the word for "beautiful." The square is rectangular and the Kremlin is formed in a triangle. The word we use for "Square" is more properly translated as "plaza."
8: In 1984 the price for a vanilla ice cream sandwich in Moscow was 15 kopeks and a glass of mineral water using a common cup from a dispensing machine was just 3 kopeks.
9: The Russian word "sad" has nothing to do with emotion or mood. It is the word for "garden."
10: Russia's Cyrillic alphabet contains 33 letters, 2 of which have no sound, but the 2 with no sound do have names and are important for grammar.
11: Moscow's patron saint is Saint George "the dragon slayer," and several other European cities share this saint as their patron also.
The final Curious © phrase:
“In America you can always find a party. In Russia the party always finds you”
(Yakov Smirnoff )
