Did you know…?

At work the other day, a colleague and I were looking up something in Wikipedia originating from a query about the Malaysian legal system. I can’t recall the term for when you read a Wikipedia article and then suddenly, a dozen links down the track, you find yourself reading about a totally unrelated but equally fascinating topic. But anyway, that happened. I had wandered back to my office when a few minutes later I got a phone call. The voice on the other end of the line was audibly excited. Trembling even. (Okay no, I made that one up.)

“Did you know…” there was a pause.
“Yes?”
“Did you know… that there’s a Jewish autonomous region in Russia?! On the Chinese border.”
“Huh… really?”

Finding it genuinely interesting (for no other reason than it was so randomly weird), I scooted back to my colleague’s office to find them poring over the Wikipedia entry for the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Which, it turns out, “was the result of Joseph Stalin’s nationality policy, which allowed for the Jewish population of Russia to receive a territory in which to pursue Yiddish cultural heritage within a socialist framework.” And only a couple minutes later we were Wiki-ing the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish.

But anyway, file this one under completely random (but kinda cool). I now resolve to use the word “oblast” in a sentence at some point in the future.

  8:11pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Miscellaneous  •   •  Tweet This  •  Comments (1)