For more info about Czech Rep. see received postcard #504.
About some facts written on the postcard:
Sněžka or Śnieżka (in Czech and Polish, Schneekoppe in German) is a mountain on the border between the Czech Republic and Poland, the most prominent point of the Silesian Ridge in the Krkonoše mountains. At 1,602 metres (5,256 ft), its summit is the highest point in the Czech Republic, in the Krkonoše and in the entire Sudetes range system.
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-language writer of novels and short stories, regarded by critics as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. Kafka strongly influenced genres such as existentialism. Most of his works, such as "Die Verwandlung" ("The Metamorphosis"), Der Prozess (The Trial), and Das Schloss (The Castle), are filled with the themes and archetypes of alienation, physical and psychological brutality, parent–child conflict, characters on a terrifying quest, labyrinths of bureaucracy, and mystical transformations.
Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In his lifetime, most of the population of Prague spoke Czech, and the division between Czech- and German-speaking people was a tangible reality, as both groups were strengthening their national identity. The Jewish community often found itself in between the two sentiments, naturally raising questions about a place to which one belongs. Kafka himself was fluent in both languages, considering German his mother tongue.
The Czech men's national ice hockey team is the national ice hockey team of the Czech Republic. It is one of the most successful national ice hockey teams in the world, currently ranked fourth by the IIHF, behind Sweden, Finland and Russia. It is controlled by the Czech Ice Hockey Association. The Czech Republic has 72,075 players officially enrolled in organized hockey (0.7% of its population). Czech Republic is a member of the so-called "Big Seven", the unofficial group of seven the strongest men's ice hockey nations, along with Canada, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden and the United States.
The principal breakthrough in soft lenses was made by the Czech chemists Otto Wichterle and Drahoslav Lím who published their work "Hydrophilic gels for biological use" in the journal Nature in 1959. This led to the launch of the first soft (hydrogel) lenses in some countries in the 1960s and the first approval of the Soflens material by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1971. These lenses were soon prescribed more often than rigid lenses, mainly due to the immediate comfort of soft lenses; by comparison, rigid lenses require a period of adaptation before full comfort is achieved. The polymers from which soft lenses are manufactured improved over the next 25 years, primarily in terms of increasing the oxygen permeability by varying the ingredients. In 1972, British optometrist Dr. Rishi Agarwal was the first to suggest disposable soft contact lenses.
Thank you, Anna !
Sent on: May 30, 2014
Received on: June 5, 2014
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