The Czech Republic invented the word robot, holds the world record for beer consumption and has more castles per square kilometre than any country in Europe. The facts below cannot be guessed, only looked up.
Words the country gave the world
Robot first appeared in 1920 in Karel Čapek's play R.U.R.; his brother Josef proposed the word, from robota, meaning serf labour. Czech also gave us pistol and howitzer, both from the Hussite wars of the 15th century, when artillery terminology developed here and passed into German and beyond.
Beer in numbers
- 140 litres per head a year — the highest consumption in the world, and continuously so since 1993
- Pilsner lager, created in 1842, was the first golden bottom-fermented beer; that style is now two thirds of world production and is named after the city of Plzeň
- In a pub, half a litre is often cheaper than mineral water of the same volume
- Žatec grows Saaz hops, a protected-origin variety bought by breweries from Japan to Mexico
Records and curiosities
- Prague Castle is, per Guinness, the largest castle complex in the world — 70,000 m² and nine centuries of building
- The ossuary at Sedlec near Kutná Hora is decorated with the bones of some 40,000 people, including a chandelier using every bone in the human body
- Contact lenses were invented in 1961 by Otto Wichterle, who cast the first hydrogel lenses on a rig built from a Merkur children's construction set in his kitchen
- Semtex was developed at Semtín near Pardubice and named after the place it was made
- The Klementinum observatory has measured temperature without interruption since 1775 — the longest continuous record in central Europe
A landlocked country that once had a coast
Shakespeare set a shipwreck on "the coast of Bohemia" in The Winter's Tale, a joke ever since. The reality is stranger: Přemysl Otakar II ruled territory reaching the Adriatic in the 13th century, and between 1920 and 1929 the republic held its own port in Hamburg — leased for 99 years under the Treaty of Versailles, with its own administration and flag.
The most castles in Europe
The republic holds over 2000 castles, palaces and ruins — roughly one every 39 km². The cause is political: under the Holy Roman Empire dozens of minor noble families ruled here, and each built its own seat. Karlštejn, from 1348, was built as a vault for the coronation jewels and as a castle women were forbidden to enter. Český Krumlov has a baroque theatre of 1682 with its original stage machinery, one of only two surviving anywhere.
Four more things
- The country has the most non-religious people in Europe after Estonia — around 70 percent declare no faith
- Cycling carries more people here than in Germany, but almost entirely outside the big cities
- Ice hockey is treated as a state matter; the Nagano gold of 1998 has its own commemorative plaque
- Over 2000 German loanwords remain in the language, among them brýle for glasses and šunka for ham — the legacy of four centuries of coexistence