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    Originally posted by Janik View Post
    Challenge - without looking it up, name the four whose name stems from Ytterby.
    Scandium is one, I think?

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      Yttrium - yes
      Scandium - no. That is named after the whole of Scandinavia rather than a specific town in Sweden. But the whole of Scandinavia is not the biggest chunk to also be an atom - that would be planets:- Mercury, Uranium, Neptunium and Plutonium. Uranium, Neptunium and Plutonium are sequential elements in the periodic table: proton numbers 92, 93 and 94 respectively. Neptunium is by far the lesser known as an element of the three as it has little to no commercial use.

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        Originally posted by Janik View Post
        Challenge - without looking it up, name the four whose name stems from Ytterby.
        Ytterbium, Terbium, Erbium and Yttrium. I'll find element 119* and call it Yorkshorium or Parkinsonium.



        *Probably a piece of piss to find if sober...

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          I always had a soft spot for Promethium. It just sounds so important.

          And I love the concept of an island of stability.

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            Yup, those four.

            I'm assuming Ytterbium was the first. And then a second was unearthed and isolated, leading to a "erm, what do we call this one?" moment. Which was solved by calling it Yttrium. And that then defined Erbium when a third appeared - 'Erby' as opposed to 'Ytt'. Then there was a fourth - Ah, f*ck, OK, 'Terbium' then.

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              On what seems like similar lines, i learned today (well yesterday evening to be accurate) that Neanderthals were named after the Neander valley in Germany where evidence of their existence was first found*

              (*By modern day homo sapiens I mean, I guess the neanderthals themselves had evidence of themselves and each other before then)

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                That valley being the Neandertal in German

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                  Well, yes, but do you know the rest of the history behind that name? The Neander valley isn't the valley of the river Neander, cos there ain't no such river. It's a stretch of some river (forget the name of it) that the locals named Neandertal in honour of local historic figure, a scholar called Neander who was apparently fond of going for a stroll in the area. And Neander was not his birth surname - that was Neumann, which he translated into Greek ("ne" = new, "ander" = man) in the Renaissance scholar fashion of the time. So we have the supreme irony of our historic predecessors in Europe being called the "new man [valleys]".
                  Last edited by Evariste Euler Gauss; 29-11-2022, 14:39.

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                    Thé River is the Düssel, which does indeed flow through Düsseldorf

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                      We could have an Only Connect connections group if someone could supply two more items to go with Neandertal and Wensleydale.

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                        Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                        On what seems like similar lines, i learned today (well yesterday evening to be accurate) that Neanderthals were named after the Neander valley in Germany where evidence of their existence was first found*

                        (*By modern day homo sapiens I mean, I guess the neanderthals themselves had evidence of themselves and each other before then)
                        I'm guessing people from there get tired of the jokes at fairly young age.

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                            Originally posted by Evariste Euler Gauss View Post
                            We could have an Only Connect connections group if someone could supply two more items to go with Neandertal and Wensleydale.
                            Ideally three more, with one of the items a red herring that potentially could be part of the group but actually is placed with a different one.

                            I can give you one - Wright Valley in Antarctica. The valley shares a name with a glacier, but also has a river (or rather a stream). But that isn't the Wright - it's the Onyx.

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                              Natalie Wood and Cary Grant died on today's date 36 and 41 years ago respectively.

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                                Originally posted by Janik View Post
                                Ideally three more, with one of the items a red herring that potentially could be part of the group but actually is placed with a different one.

                                I can give you one - Wright Valley in Antarctica. The valley shares a name with a glacier, but also has a river (or rather a stream). But that isn't the Wright - it's the Onyx.
                                Cwmbran means Crow Valley. The river in Cwmbran is the Afon Llwyd which means Grey River

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                                  We've got four - I'll push the Grand Canyon as our red herring on the grounds that it's a canyon not named after the river that flows through it rather than a valley, but is rather famous so liable to mislead if someone picks the category from Wensleydale.

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                                    Wensleydale is also a good red herring of course, on cheese associations.

                                    Edit - anti-red herring of course. A red herring for a second cheeses category. Or a gorge one:- Grand Canyon, Cheddar, ..., ...
                                    Last edited by Janik; 29-11-2022, 16:22.

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                                      Glenwood Canyon is formed by the same river (not the Glenwood)

                                      While Laurel Canyon doesn't even have a watercourse (rather like how the Los Angeles River is often dry).

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                                        In the spirit of the thread, despite having relatives in Cwmbran, I'd always thought the river there was the Usk/Wysg. Thought it looked a bit small.

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                                          Ooh, ooh, Olduvai is a gorge! Hey, we are getting something really misleading and potentially confusing here. Is it dry or is there a river Olduvai?

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                                            Neander, Wensleydale, Wright, Cwmbran
                                            Grand Canyon, Olduvai, Cheddar, ...

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                                              Originally posted by ChrisJ View Post
                                              In the spirit of the thread, despite having relatives in Cwmbran, I'd always thought the river there was the Usk/Wysg. Thought it looked a bit small.
                                              The Llwyd enters the Usk at Caerleon. Which used to be called Isca when it was a Roman fort. Isca stems from a brythonic word for water and is also the root of the modern day name for the river Usk. (I did actually learn that today because I suddenly made the likely connection between "Isca" and "Usk" and went to check whether they were actually linked.)

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                                                Originally posted by Patrick Thistle View Post
                                                Isca stems from a brythonic word for water
                                                Oh yes. Presumably cognate with uisgeas in uisge beatha, "water of life," or whisky. So not just Brythonic but generally Celtic.

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                                                  Looking at some old football medals on eBay I found one for the startlingly-named "NigNog football league" in 1948, and then via Google learning about "NigNog clubs" for children; "Nig" and "Nog" being Northern terms for boy and girl.

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                                                    Really? Wow I did not know that. The term had quite a different meaning when I was a kid

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