Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2021 July 24

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July 24

3-letter country code

Olympic TV shows Russian tennis player Daniil Medvedev (ROO) playing Kazakhstan's Alexander Bublik (KAZ). But, the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 and International vehicle registration codes for the Russian federation are both RUS. So where does ROO (as shown on the TV screen) come from? Thanks. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:2B99 (talk) 05:13, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Are you sure it didn't say ROC? Russia's name (and I guess, by extension, its abbreviation) is banned from the next two Olympics for doping violations and coverups, and the team is officially ROC (for Russian Olympic Committee).[1] Clarityfiend (talk) 05:22, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Anyway, the Olympics use their own codes (with a long and convoluted history), and not any ISO standard... AnonMoos (talk) 11:10, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

There is an article about Russian Olympic Committee athletes at the 2020 Summer Olympics. Curiously the team name is "ROC", not to be official expanded to "Russian Olympic Committee". Their team paraded in the Gojuon order for āru ō shī. --Error (talk) 22:17, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

American commentators and reporters have had no hesitancy to call them "Russian Olympic Committee" or just plain "Russia". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:05, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Ah yes, it must have said ROC. Thanks for the explanation. 2601:648:8202:350:0:0:0:2B99 (talk) 16:33, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Just some background history, this is the third such designation for Russian athletes. In the 1992 Summer Olympics and 1992 Winter Olympics, several former Soviet Union countries (including Russia) competed as the Unified Team (code = EUN). In the 2018 Winter Olympics, Russian athletes competed as Olympic Athletes from Russia (code = OAR). The OAR team was functionally the same as the ROC team. --Jayron32 13:12, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

Hatay State

Were there reactions or comments from Nazi Germany after the cession of Alexandretta to Turkey? Thank you. --87.3.51.116 (talk) 15:56, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Why would they care? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:51, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

That's speculation, but the question is clear enough and potentially answerable with references. --Trovatore (talk) 18:29, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

(ec) Why would they not care? This is a couple of weeks before the start of WW2. It seems quite plausible that Germany was watching developments, any changes to the power balance, very closely. --Wrongfilter (talk) 18:31, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

My understanding is that Nazi Germany had very little interest in the Middle East until military success in North Africa opened up a host of possibilities (they only intervened in Libya to prevent an Italian defeat). However they did send Franz von Papen as ambassador to Ankara in 1939 in an attempt to stop Turkey joining the Allies, so perhaps an agreement which reconciled France and Turkey would have been undesirable to the Germans.

I did a quick Google search in an effort to directly answer your question and found:

Document on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945: series D (p. 1149)

This is a dispatch from the German chargé d'affaires in Moscow, Werner von Tippelskirch, who reports that the Soviets believed that the Alexandretta agreement was bad news for the Axis and Italy in particular. I didn't find anything else. Alansplodge (talk) 18:39, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

From the actual article linked by the OP:

"On June 29, 1939, following a referendum, the Hatay legislature voted to disestablish the Hatay State and join Turkey. This referendum has been labelled both "phoney" and "rigged", as the Turkish government organised tens of thousands of Turks from outside Alexandretta to register as citizens and vote.^[3] The French encouraged the annexation, hoping it would act as an incentive to Turkey to reject an alliance with Nazi Germany.^[4]"

[My italics] {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.27.141 (talk) 13:53, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it turns out there was furious maneuvering by the European powers over Turkey. The Turks were concerned about Italian expansionism, which led them to sign the Anglo-French-Turkish Treaty of 1939 (we don't have an article on this if anyone is bored). When France fell, the Turks began to have second thoughts and when Italy invaded Greece, rather than declare war which they should have done under the 1939 treaty, they declared neutrality instead. The British respected this because neutral was better than joining the Axis. The 1941 treaty with Germany was mainly about chromite which the Turks dug out of the ground in large quantities and the Germans needed to make weapons. Alansplodge (talk) 18:40, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for answering my question. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:52, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

After a certain amount of research I suspect that during WW2 German industry needed chromite perhaps not so much for making actual weapons as to make aluminium and its alloys, used in aircraft manufacture, eg Duralumin and Elektron (alloy) (mea culpa)—also used for making incendiary bombs— and also light alloy engine blocks made by eg Maybach and others. As an additional query, if anyone can find out anything substantial about aluminium alloy manufacture (NB not pure aluminium) in Germany during WW2 I would be very grateful. Cheers, :>MinorProphet (talk) 16:59, 28 July 2021 (UTC)

What cross symbol is Amy Shira Teitel wearing here?

Amy Shira Teitel is a Canadian space history YouTuber. What does her necklace in this video symbolize? I think I've seen the symbol before but I can't remember the significance. Also I think I remember she's Jewish - does that help? Hayttom (talk) 18:50, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I don’t think it is a cross… it could be the “scales of justice”. Blueboar (talk) 20:12, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I looked around for other images of her and found several that had her wearing what looked to be the same necklace. In those pictures, it was an angel.For example: https://ukingscommunity.ca/files/story-images/_storyGrid/2020TeitelA2_ITC.jpg --Khajidha (talk) 20:31, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Looks like a model airplane to me: DC3/Douglas C-47. --91.47.30.85 (talk) 05:14, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

... but with a reduced wingspan – about the same as the length of the aircraft, whereas for a DC3 or Douglas C-47 it is more like 150% of the length.  --Lambiam 09:04, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

And with badly bent-back wings too, or maybe it's an angel after all. Occam's razor says the simplest explanation is usually the best one. Alansplodge (talk) 20:42, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

Isn't it a Patriarchal cross? DuncanHill (talk) 20:46, 26 July 2021 (UTC)