How Vauxhall inspired Russia
QUESTION Is the Russian word for station, vokzal, related to Vauxhall in London?
Vokzal’s origin can be traced to the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in london. It developed in the 17th and 18th centuries as a recreational space for wealthy londoners (there was a high entrance fee) and was a venue for dancing, opera, concerts (including Handel), theatre and art (including William Hogarth). In addition, it gained a reputation as a place for illicit encounters.
In 1783, theatre manager Michael Maddox had the idea of copying Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens on a site close to st Petersburg in Russia at Tsarskoye selo, the tsar’s rural residence, and he imported both the concept and the name, rendered in Russian as ‘vokzal’.
Russia’s first railway was opened in october 1837, taking the Russian upper class the 17 miles from st Petersburg to Vokzal Pleasure Gardens, with the terminus station also called Vokzal.
The railway was single-track with a huge six-foot gauge and central passing loop; and it was fast, taking just 35 minutes. as Russian railways developed, the name vokzal was applied to any station.
london did for a time have a rail terminal at Vauxhall, before Waterloo station was created, and this was one of many railway sites visited by Russian railway engineers in 1840. Possibly the English station name encouraged the Russian use of vokzal, but it is not the origin.
Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens reached the height of their fame in the 1830s but social changes led to financial problems, and they closed in 1859.
Now scarcely remembered in london, it is curious that their memorial is the Russian word for station.
Dr Graeme Davis, Hastings, east sussex
QUESTION What is considered space exploration’s most important benefit to humankind?
SPACE exploration’s most important benefit to humankind is arguably the technological advances and innovations that stem from it.
These advances not only enhance our capabilities in space but also have profound applications on Earth, driving progress in many different fields.
The rigorous demands of space missions have led to the development of new technologies and materials. Innovations such as satellite communications and GPs, and advances in computing, robotics and materials science originated from space exploration and now play crucial roles in our daily lives.
We must also consider future benefits. at some point, mankind may well be faced with a ‘killer asteroid’ and unless our space capabilities are suitably advanced to deflect or destroy it, we may be obliterated.
Also, Earth cannot provide an infinite supply of materials for our civilisation. We are running short of a number of vital materials: copper, helium, gold, zinc and so forth. less obviously, we are running out of gallium, hafnium, indium, arsenic, germanium and tellurium. We may need to mine these from space. Finally, if we make our world uninhabitable, we may need the capability to colonise outer space.
Chris Newman, Oxford
QUESTION Where does ananas, the French word for pineapple, come from?
IN 1493, when christopher columbus and his crew landed on what is now the island of Guadeloupe, they discovered these exotic fruits. a single specimen survived the voyage back to spain, where columbus presented it to king Ferdinand II. He called it pina de Indes, meaning ‘pine of the Indians’. In spain, a pineapple is still called pina.
Peter Martyr, tutor to the spanish princes, recorded the first tasting: ‘The most invincible king Ferdinand relates that he has eaten another fruit brought from those countries. It is like a pine-nut in form and colour, covered with scales and firmer than a melon. Its flavour excels all other fruits.’
In 1557, andre Thevet, a French traveller, described the fruit in his account of his journey to the americas and called it ‘nana’, a word that comes from the Tupi tribe of the amazon basin and means ‘excellent fruit’. This led to the scientific name
Ananas comosus, with comosus meaning ‘tufted’ in reference to the fruit’s stem. ananas soon became the favoured term in French-speaking countries.
In the 18th century, there is evidence that we used both terms in English. Bernard Mandeville wrote in The Fable of Bees in 1714: ‘I was thinking on the man to whom we are in a great measure obliged for the production and culture of the exotic, we were speaking of, in this kingdom; sir Matthew Decker, the first ananas or pine-apple, that was brought to perfection in England, grew in his garden at Richmond.’
Ben Royce, Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire
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