Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2017 February 20

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February 20

1989 Yak-40 accident

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This Russian article details an accident of Yakovlev Yak-40 (flying from Przhevalsk to Frunze), reportedly in August 1989. Yet I'm not seeing this accident either in ASN or in Airdisaster.ru databases (seemingly it's not this). Googling was also inconclusive (including the exact date). Any ideas? Brandmeister^talk 13:02, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

According to the article you linked to (and, not speaking Russian, I was forced to use google translate), I gather that the "hero pilot" in question was most recently employed in some sort of air traffic control role at Ignatyevo Airport at the time the article was written. There are links to the airport's website on our page, though the page is understandably in Russian only. If you email them, they may be able to put you in touch with him? His "official heroism award" MUST be recorded in some Soviet archive? Eliyohub (talk) 18:26, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

According to the article, he (Andrey Konnov) received the Order "For Personal Courage" from Gorbachev himself for saving 40 passengers. The article says the hydraulic accumulator exploded, stabilizer malfunctioned, the autopilot disengaged and the plane was flown manually. Upon approach they also discovered that the landing gear malfunctioned, so made a belly landing. Very strange... Brandmeister^talk 18:37, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Turns out they probably messed up with the month, it was September per airdisaster.ru. 19:51, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

And as the plane was consumed by the heat, the pilot cried, "Oh, my bakin' YAK! ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:01, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Is there a canonical way of grouping Europeans?

Is there a canonical way of grouping Europeans? Or is it just a question with whom you want to be associated with (or not)? For example, Germany could be Central, West or Central-East Europe, Italy could be Southern or Central Europe, Poland could be Eastern, or Central Europe.--Hofhof (talk) 23:30, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

See our articles Western Europe, Central Europe and Eastern Europe. The Cold War and the Iron Curtain reinforced a concept of a two-part Europe, as did the Great Schism in earlier times, but the 3-part model has always been popular too. Rojomoke (talk) 23:42, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

The Western part of Europe has for a long time had a North/South division, roughly along Catholic (south) and Protestant (north) lines. One of the more interesting divisions is the Alcohol belts of Europe, culinary anthropologists have noted a butter/olive oil line separating the cooking fat of choice. this article has some interesting ways of splitting up the continent. --Jayron32 02:37, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

From a British perspective, until 1782 the foreign relations responsibilities of the Secretary of State for the Northern Department and the Secretary of State for the Southern Department were divided up as Protestant (Northern) and Catholic and Muslim (Southern). --165.225.80.99 (talk) 10:01, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

If you want meaningful categories, you would have to resort to cultural groups: Romanic, Scandinavian, Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, and Slavic. Not sure whether this will settle the issue. Some would still highlight how different they are from the rest. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.252.177.161 (talk) 02:29, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Of course, you missed Celtic/Gaelic in your cultural groupings. And Basque. And Turkic. And Albanian. And Finnic/Ugric. And probably more I'm not remembering yet. --Jayron32 02:37, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Baltic, Greek and Maltese. Wymspen (talk) 08:51, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Hungarian, at least by language more different from its neighbors than Bengali and English are. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 16:43, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

You guys are producing a linguistic classification, but that may not have been what was originally asked for. AnonMoos (talk) 00:21, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Would a big Venn diagram with lots of circles work for you, OP? Since splitting Europe along any one criterion would give a misleading impression of enormous chalk-and-cheese differences between cultures that actually overlap in lots of other ways. --129.67.116.115 (talk) 10:18, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

The traditional canonical way is to split them into "us" and "them". "We" are vigorous, cleanly, diligent workers, industrious, independent, creative, and of superior racial stock. "They" are dirty poor lazy mongrel foreigner who steal our women (and today, probably, men), and whose soft life in the south has made them decadent weaklings/whose strenuous life in the north has made them uncouth barbarians without any civilisation. This scheme has worked well for ages, so why change it now? It also easily generalised beyond just Europeans. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:41, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Stephan Schulz -- I think nowadays it's often more along the lines of Stereotype-Based European Joking... AnonMoos (talk) 00:21, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

The sentiment was very real when the whole austerity thing was at its height. -165.234.252.11 (talk) 20:23, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Ironically, the north of North America is lefty weaklings and the south of the US is manly men. Sometimes kids pushing 10 in the deep South literally see snow for the first time in their lives and their fathers are hard-working real men (or uncouth, uncultured rednecks). Also, what you call hardening cold in Europe is nothing special in America. Washington DC's at the latitude of the south tip of Sardinia and is built on a swamp near sea level. It has one of the mildest winters in the North yet has reached -20°C and 71cm of snow in one storm. Buffalo, New York (a city of 1.2 million) is pretty low and flat and closer to the equator than the French Riviera. It's reached -29°C and had meters of snow in one storm. Lebanon, Kansas on an endless steppe at 560 meters below the latitude of Istanbul and Ankara has reached -40°C. Iroquois Falls, Canada (a city closer to the equator than Paris and Stuttgart) has reached -58.3°C, colder than Europe's record low (in a village in bnorthwestern Russia near Siberia) It is only 259 meters above sea level. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 23:58, 21 February 2017 (UTC)