Last weekend we did the Gregor Johann Mendel in Brno self-paced walking tour published by the Tourist Information Centre.
There's a plaque on the building in Czech, English, and German.
Mendel is buried in the Augustinian Tomb at the Central Cemetery. I still haven't made it out to the Central Cemetery but it's still on my list.
The centre is located in the first-Republic villa where he lived from 1935 until he passed away in 1939.
The Hotel Avion opened in 1929. The most striking thing about the 10-storey hotel is that it is only eight metres (26 feet) wide.
In 2010, the functional building was designated as a Czech Cultural Monument. Following years of disrepair, the hotel was under renovation from 2016-2022.
Inside of the hotel is a museum exhibit of Fuchs' work in Brno. Some of it I've seen before, such as the Bohuslav Fuchs House, and some I'll need to go check out.
The exhibit it pretty interesting. It's free for hotel guests and 99 Kč ($5) for visitors.
Markéta Vondroušová won Wimbleton today. Kája was so excited that a Czech player won.
She is the first unseeded ladies' singles Wimbledon champion. She was ranked number 42, which also makes her the lowest ranked Wimbleton champion.
She defeated Ons Jabeur, from Tunisa, in the final, 6-4, 6-4.
Here's a video from the finals that I found on YouTube.
General Emil Boček turned 100 years old on 25. January. He was a Brno native and the last remaining airman of Czechoslovak Royal Air Force. On 25. March he passed away.
When he was 16, he illegally escaped the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and he joined the Czechoslovak foreign army in France. Later he became one of the youngest recruited in to the RAF.
He was an aircraft mechanic in the 312th Fighter Squadron. From 1944, he served as a fighter pilot in B Squadron of the Czechoslovak 310th Fighter Squadron. He was credited with 26 operational flights, flying almost 74 hours.
Although he was a hero and fought in the resistance, the Communists frowned that he was a member of the non-communist resistance and he left he military in 1946.
He had owned a car repair shop in Brno but he had to give up ownership when Czechoslovakia nationalised private property following the 1948 coup. He continued to work at the shop and was never persecuted by the state.
The general was awarded the Order of the White Lion of Military Group, 3rd class in 2010. In 2017 he was awarded the Order of the White Lion of the First Class Military Group for extraordinary services to the defence and security of the state and excellent combat activities.
Following his passing, Prime Minister Fiala said that "General Boček was fighting for our country to be democratic, free and independent."
Here are two short videos, in Czech, that I found out on YouTube.
Česká televize recently decided on this year's entry for Eurovision. From 2 November to 8 December 2022, artists could submit their entry for 2023. There were 170 entries received and the field was narrowed down to five which were announced in January.
The rules were that solo artists had to have Czech citizenship. For group entires, the maximum number of members was six and at least one of the lead vocalists had to have Czech citizenship. This citizenship requirement was a Czech thing because there's no Eurovision rule that says a contestant must be a citizen of the country being represented. For example, Céline Dion won in 1988 competing form Switzerland even though she is Canadian.
This is the first year that the country will compete at Eurovision as Czechia instead of as Czech Republic. This is also the first time that Czech TV organised a live broadcast to determine who would be selected by audience vote. The vote was weighted as 70% for international voting and 30% by local Czech voting.
Here are the five entries that battled it out on TV.
Up third was Markéta Irglová with her song Happy. She's from Valašské Meziříčí and has lived in Ireland, the USA, and now in Iceland. She won an Academy Award in 2008 for Best Original Song, Falling Slowly, for the film Once.
Vesna performed fourth with their song My Sister's Crown. Three of the six members of the group are Czech, with a Bulgarian, a Slovak, and a Russian. Their song is about empowerment and pan-Slavic sisterhood with the lyrics in English, Czech, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian. 
The final performer was Rodan with his song Introvert Party Club. In 2021 he was nominated for Discovery of the Year 2021 and the music magazine Headliner included him amongst the 50 hopefuls of Czech music.
Today is the second significant day of the year. It is the Day of Czechs Abroad and it is meant to honour Czechs who emigrated. The USA is the country with the largest number of Czechs living abroad and one of the most famous emigres is Martina Navrátilová.
Martina Navratilova is considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time. She dominated women's tennis in the 1970s and 1980s and with 59 major titles. She won her first major title in 1974 and won her last major title in 2006, just before her 50th birthday. She'd been winning major tennis titles for 32 years. Wow! Here's the official trailer from YouTube for Martina Navratilova: Unrivalled.
She was born in Prague in 1956. She started playing tennis at a young ago and she won the national tennis championship in Czechoslovakia when she was just 15. In 1975 she turned professional. While on tour in the USA in 1975, when she was 18 years old, she asked for political asylum and was given a green card. When she defected, the communists stripped her of her Czechoslovak citizenship. In 1981 she became an American citizen. After the Velvet Revolution and Velvet Divorce, she was able to gain Czech citizenship in 2008 and is now a dual citizen of the USA and Czechland.
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Once she was an American citizen she came out of the closet and has been an active spokesperson and role model for the LGBT community. It's sad that she could not come out earlier but if she did then it could have disqualified her from gaining U.S. citizenship.
Here's a short video I found on YouTube that talks about her life and career.
Ema Destinová is considered to be one of the greatest soprano opera singers of all time. She was born Emilie Pavlina Věnceslava Kittlová on 26 February 1878, in Prague when it was still part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
She grew up in Milešov, about 50 km (31 miles) south of Prague. At 14, she was sent to a German boarding school in Prague to learn German. From the age of 13, her voice teacher had been Marie von Dreger Löwe-Destinn, and Ema eventually took her surname, Destinová, as an homage.
She had a short engagement at the Dresden Opera and in 1897 she was rejected by the Prague National Theatre. However, in 1898 she debuted at the Berlin Court Opera where she won over the public. She remained in Berlin until 1909 where she sang in 54 operas, including 12 premieres.
In 1904, she debuted in London and appeared in several operas over the following two seasons. In 1908, she debuted in New York at the Metropolitan. In 1914, she returned to home after the start of WWI. Due to her links with the Czech resistance, Austria-Hungary revoked her passport and she was under house arrest until the end of the war. She returned to New York in 1919 but her voice had become rusty but she continued singing at the Met until 1921.
After returning to Czechoslovakia, which was now a new country, she married Joseph Halsbach, an officer in the Czechoslovak Air Force in 1923. She retired in 1926 but her final concert performance was in London in 1928. She passed away from a stroke in České Budějovice on 28 January 1930, a month before her 52nd birthday.
There's no doubt that she was talented. She could play both the piano and the violin. She was also fluent in Czech, German, Italian, French, and English which allowed her to sing in multiple languages. She sang the first Carmen to be recorded.
Here's a short video I found on YouTube so you can hear her voice.
A film, Božská Ema, "The Divine Emma" was released in 1979. Although it was submitted as an entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 54th Academy Awards it wasn't nominated.
Ema Destinová is featured on the 2000 Kč banknote.
Yesterday, 19 September, was 100 years since Czech athletes Emil Zátopek and Dana Zátopková were born.
No, they weren't twins. They were husband and wife. They just happened to have been born on the same day in 1922.
Dana Ingrová was a college handball player who led the Czechoslovak handball team to a national title. Later she became the first Czech woman to throw a javelin over 40 metres which qualified her for the 1948 London Olympics.
Emil Zátopek worked at the Baťa shoe factory in Zlín. He served in the army as a runner. He gained fame for riding a bicycle from Prague to Berlin a won a 5000-metre race in an Allied Occupation meet.
The two met when Emil congratulated Dana on qualifying for the Olympics and they discovered that they had the same birthday. At the 1948 Olympics, Emil won the gold medal in the 10.000 metre race and the silver medal in the 5.000 metre race while Dana placed 7th in the javelin throw. They got married shortly after the Olympics.
Emil won three gold medals for the 5.000 metres, 10.000 metres, and the marathon. He decided at the last minute to compete in the marathon, the first marathon of his life, and he won. To this date he is still the only person to win all three races at the same Olympics. He gained the nickname of the "Czech Locomotive".
Emil retired after placing 6th at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. Dana placed 4th in Melbourne but won the silver medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome.
The Communist party promoted him as a national hero. However, he supported the Prague Spring and vocally opposed the 1968 Soviet-led invasion. As a consequence he was expelled from the Communist Party, stripped of his rank and kicked out of the army. He was not allowed to hold any important position and was forced to perform manual labour including work in a mine. After the Velvet Revolution he was removed from the "bad list" and fully welcomed back to Czechoslovak society.
In 1998, he was awarded the Medal of Merit, First Grade.
Between Dana and Emil they broke 35 world records. Dana received the Olympic Order for distinguished contributions to the Olympic movement. In 2012, Emil was one of the first 12 athletes to be inducted into the IAAF Hall of Hame and in 2013, the editors at Runner's World Magazine named him as the Greatest Runner of All Time.
In 1995 he appeared in an Adidas commercial.
Emil and Dana were married for 52 years. He passed away in 2000 at the age of 78 while she passed away in 2020 at the age of 97.
In 2021, the movie Zátopek was released. I still need to see it but it won 8 Czech Lions. Here's the movie trailer that I found on YouTube.
Happy 100th birthday to Emil Zátopek and Dana Zátopková!!
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