15 meglepő tény Magyarországról

We always love seeing videos about Hungary and what foreigners highlight about our culture and history. Szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu recently came across a video in which a British vlogger lists 15 facts he found shocking about Hungary. He starts with a quite funny misbelief, and goes on with further interesting facts. Some of the facts are quite well known, but most of them are actually interesting for us, too. Let’s see what the Travelling Weasels channel found shocking about Hungary.

Musical condoms were invented by a Hungarian company – This is actually a hoax, which spread in the middle of the 90s. At the time, people believed quite a lot of foolish things about ex-socialist countries.

One of the world’s oldest metro lines circulates in Budapest – The Millennium Underground (metro line 1) was the world’s first electricity driven underground and Europe’s first underground train (there is only one line the world that actually preceded it by a few years: the City & South London Railway).

The Hungarian Parliament is one of Europe’s oldest legislative buildings.

The many Hungarian inventions – Tanbay only highlights four inventions, which is completely understandable, because he could make a separate video only about Hungarian inventions. We have published several articles about the inventions Hungarians are so proud of.

We have incredible spas and thermal baths.

Hungarians have won 13 Nobel Prizes – The vlogger concludes that Hungarians must be very smart. 

Hungarian wine dates back to Roman times – or even longer. According to historians, the Celtics already knew viniculture in the Carpathian Basin in 3rd century B.C.

Interesting Hungarian law on names – Parents have to choose from a pre-approved list of names. If they want to call their kids something else, they have to apply for approval.

The world’s largest geothermal cave system is in Hungary – It lies underneath Budapest.

Hollywood has quite a few connections to Hungary – The vlogger mentions the founder of Paramount Pictures, Adolph Zukor, the founder of Fox Studios, Willian Fried, and the director of Casablanca, Michael Curtiz.

Hungarians are incredible at chess – Judit Polgár is considered the strongest female chess player of all time.

The figure of Dracula – There was a bit of confusion at this point, because even though Havasalföld, the terrorized region by Dracula, was once part of the Kingdom of Hungary, it became independent in the 14th century. Also, Vlad Tepes was Romanian. Hungarian actor Béla Lugosi was the first to make Dracula famous in a movie.

A Hungarian born engineer created the Volkswagen Beetle – The truth is that Béla Barényi actually invented a cheap people’s car and published his plans in 1929. The Volkswagen Beetle came out in 1936 and it was very similar to the model of the Hungarian engineer, who later sued the company and won. Béla Barényi had more than 2500 inventions in the automobile industry – He was also the one to introduce crash tests.

source: Daily News Hungary

Decide if the following statements are true or false:

1) Hungary became famous for its musical condoms, which were very popular globally in the 90’s

2) The world’s first underground line was deployed in Budapest

3) Hungary has world famous vines dating back to the Roman era

4) Count Vlad, otherwise known as count Dracula, was a Hungarian lord.

5) The famous Volkswagen Beetle design traces back its origin to a Hungarian engineer.

Key: F F T F T