Things We Learned on Google Today- Kharkiv is Ukraine's Secnd Largest City

Hmm....Google is not always correct about everything. When I asked Google who was the Ukraine's most famous athlete. It/They responded with Anna Kournikova, the retired RUSSIAN tennis starlett who is more known for her off-the-court life as she was in a relationship with some pop star (yaaaaawn!).

Of course, another hot Russian female tennis player has been making more headlines lately and that is Maria Sharapova who lost yesterday in the Wimbledon women's tennis championship to Petra Kvitova from the Czech Republic. Sharapova is also engaged to some Serbian NBA player (yaaaaaaaawn again!).

But, Google did tell us that Kharkiv, not Odessa (which is actually the fourth largest Ukrainian city) is the country's second largest city. It ranks behind Kiev, but ahead of the industrial city of Dnipropetrovsk, which may have the longest name for any major city in Europe.

Kharkiv has 1.46 million people, and it is known for its metro system and Freedom Square. It is also sister cities with Cincinnati, Ohio, which is best known for its baseball team (ironically called the Reds, forgive the Cold War humor) and for being the setting of a 1970s sitcom set in a radio station which Ukrainians are probably not too familiar with.

The city also has The Annuciation Cathedral, which is one of the largest Orthodox cathedrals in the world. Kharkiv also has many Bronze artificats, and it is the hometown of weightlifter Igor Rybak.

Since the city was occupied by Nazi forces in World War II, there is some dark history in Kharkiv as 300,000 of the city's Jewish resident were killed during the Holocaust.

The city is in the northern part of the Ukraine. I wonder if there chicken is as good as the chicken in Kiev....well, we couldn't resist!

This is actually the fourth in our series on profiles of former Soviet Republics. The other three were Uzbekistan, Russia and Kygystan, which is arguably the hardest country in the world to spell!

Silly Photo to Fill Space- Gymnastics Teacher

We conclude both our series witin series on summer jobs and our series Silly Photo to Fill Space with this image of very flexible young lady whom we don't know personally!

We have had a lot of fun with this series in the year or two or so since its inception and we never got around to showing the image of a samurai ski-jumping, but there is always a chance that this series will resurrect itself like Freddy Krueger some time in the neat future.

Our feature city of the month for this series is Trenton, NJ, where one can find the Discover Gymnastics Academy, which is offering a free trial class according to their web site. Though we don't have any idea if they have openings for gymnastics instructors or not, we can't imagine a more fun summer job than trying to make some young gymnast the next Nellie Kim (or at least the next Courtney Kupets, who was a legandary gymnast at The University of Georgia).

Of course since more and more folks were born either during end of or after the Cold War, we should remind our readers that Kim, a former Soviet gymnast who turned 53 on July 29, made Olympic Gymnastics history. She won three gold and two silver medals at the 1976 Montreal Olympics where another gymnast (a Romanian named Nadia whose name we can't spell, or perhaps we can, but we're too lazy!) became a household name.

Kim also won two gold medals at the 1980 Moscow Olympics where Misha the Bear was the mascot. I ate a great place called Misha's Cafe in Baku, Azerbaijan- of all places in 2008, but that's really getting off the topic.

Even though many Americans used the word Soviet and Russian arbitrarily in the days when "Welcome Back Kotter" initially aired, Kim is actually from Kazakhstan which Borat made famous/infamous.

As of 2002, Kim lives in or around St. Paul, Minn. Nadia lives in or around Norman, Oklahoma. No one knows what happened to Misha the Bear.

SIDEBAR: Alas, The Ragsdale High School Tigers, one of our past 'high schools of the week' (there are many of them!), lost to their rival, the Dudley High School Panthers of Greensboro, NC, by a 12-0 score. The Tigers played on the road Friday night, but their next game against Western Guilford High School will be at home in the Greensboro/High Point 'burb of Jamestown, NC. We hear the Tigers' band kicks butt, by the way!