The little old lady from the KGB

Over 40 years, Melita Norwood systematically passed detailed information about Britain’s nuclear weapons programme to the KGB spymasters who gave her the codename Hola.

What seemed interesting to me here, is that this spy lady was of latvian parentage. Mrs Norwood was born Melita Sirnis in Bournemouth in March the daughter of a Latvian father, at whose knee she learned revolutionary politics - he had founded the Southern Worker And Labour And Socialist Journal, a weekly paper inspired by the Russian revolution; her mother, who was English joined the Co-operative party.

Mrs Norwood’s secret life was revealed by The Times in 1999 after resarch by Christopher Andrew, the Cambridge historian, into the files of Vasili Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist. She was “extraordinarily motivated Soviet agent right to the end of her life”. The research revealed that Mrs Norwood had been recruited as an agent in the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB, in 1937.

As far as is known, she was “the longest-serving Soviet agent in British history”.

Wanna bet?

For the first time in the history of medicine of Latvia, doctors had to sew on back the privy part of a guy who had cut it off fully. He had done it by himself being drunk. And the underlying reason for that was...desire to win Ls 1000 in bets with his friends.
The latvian guy is not the only one of that kind in the world.
A Wales rugby fan challenged his friends to bet with him that Wales team would win England in the february game, 2005. He was sure it would not happen as Wales had not managed it for 12 years. In case of the victory of Wales' team he would have to cut off his genitals. And the "miracle" happened-that evening Wales' team won England and rugby fan did what he had promised...

Use imagination to attract customers

Nowadays business people in Latvia want to make big money. Well, everybody does. This is becoming more difficult and in order to gain particular market share, they have to carefully decide on strategies and tactics they are going to use.
In order to gain interest of the potential customers of the company, founders sometimes choose interesting, funny names for the company.
For example, in the Register of Enterprises of the Republic of Latvia, you can find enlisted such companies as:

• "Flat tomcat"
• Ltd. "Poor Jorik"
• "Reversion to God"
• Ltd. "So what?"
• Ltd. "Warmth of Rooster"
• Ltd. "The day before Midsummer night"
• Ltd. "Freak"
• Ltd. "New horizonts of Republic of Chechnya"
• Ltd. "Coma&Co"
• N/O for cat fanciers "Magic Cat"
• N/O hunters club "Grey Rabbit"
• N/O "Ladies' side"
• Ltd. "Mosquito Tool"
• "Support foundation for shooting of children and youth of Latvia" Inc.

Anything can be bought

Everyone knows that battles between different competitors can sometimes go too far. And the other thing is that people often think that everything can be bought. Evidently, the owner of the guest-house "Pedase" in distric of Harju, Estonia thinks that he might have some ambitious visitors, who will be ready to pay for everything they desire or want to do, so he decided how to earn extra money in such cases. For 550EEK (approximately 25Ls) you can go and gather mushrooms in the surroundings of that place.
This autumn in Latvia there wasn't a rich harvest of mushrooms, so maybe next year let's go and gather mushrooms in Estonia! And don't forget to take 550EEK with you!

Latvia is still a part of the Soviet Union

Recently the world championship in powerlifting took place in Brussels, which is considered the capital city of the European Union. The old established order requires that during the opening ceremony the hymns of participating countries of the world championship should be played.
When it was a turn to play the hymn of Latvia, the melody and the words the participants heard were not those of accustomed "God, bless Latvia..", but "Soviet Latvia, live forever...", which was the hymn of Soviet Latvia when it was a part of Soviet Union.
If the capital city of the European Union, which Latvia joined already 2 years ago still thinks that Latvia's hymn is that of Soviet Union times, then the question is whether a kind of global village exists, or maybe there is possibility that some of us still live in a cave?