Interesting Facts

Australia has been invited to take part in the Eurovision song contest, as part of the competition’s 60th anniversary celebrations. (The Australian contestant, is yet to be chosen, but they will fight it out in the semi-final, and hopefully the final, which this year is being held in Vienna, Austria. It must be down to continental drift.)

This little fact cropped up today (don't ask why).  Seemingly during the Bush administration, on a presidential visit to Austria in 2006, the White House flew in a special portable toilet to Vienna for the president's personal use during his visit. (They were so concerned about Bush's security that a special port-a-loo captured everything and flew the waste material back to the United States in the event some enterprising foreign intelligence agency conducted a sewage pipe operation designed to trap and examine his waste material. I know this is called Interesting People, but surely he wasn't that interesting.  If it's true, the world has gone mad!) Source

The Spanish Riding School in Vienna, famed for its Lipizzaner horses, has admitted two female riders for the first time in its 430-year history. (In a further break with "tradition" they have accepted a non-Austrian, 17- year-old British girl Sojourner Morell. In exchange for her training she will commit herself to working for the school for at least 10 years! I thought indentured labour was illegal!)