Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2023 October 14

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October 14

Correct licence plate code of Nigeria: WAN or NGR?

According to our list International vehicle registration code, the current code for Nigeria is WAN since 1937. This is in accordance with the source, the official UNECE list, however this PDF is undated and may not be up to date. The Dutch Numberplate Archives claim that the code of Nigeria has changed to NGR in 1992. German automobile association ADAC has taken over that apparent new code in their list, as did German website landerdaten.info in their collection of all kinds of country codes. However, this may have happened because the claim was first taken over in the German Wikipedia article. The list at targheitaliane.it declares NGR only to be "unofficial". Is there an official, indubitably up-to-date list where we can make sure which code is the correct one - WAN or NGR? --KnightMove (talk) 14:41, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

This website [1] gives the dates the codes changed. Gambia has been WAG (West Africa Gambia) since 1932. Ghana was previously WAC (West Africa Gold Coast) until independence in 1957. From 1959 it is GH. Nigeria has been WAN (West Africa Nigeria) since 1937. Sierra Leone has been WAL (West Africa Sierra Leone) since 1937. This website [2] agrees, as does [3] and our article Vehicle registration plates of Nigeria. Some websites also give the International Olympic code, and on this one [4] you can see how confusion might have arisen. Nigeria became independent in 1960, so a 1992 change is unlikely. 88.111.190.170 (talk) 17:04, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Turquoise mining in the Sinai

Good afternoon, everyone. In Sinai in Serabit-El-Hadem and Wadi Moghar ancient Egyptians mined turquoise, but I have not found any data on modern turquoise mining there. What data is there about modern mining of turquoise in these places? Thank you in advance! Vyacheslav84 (talk) 16:32, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Couldn't find much except: "Today's Egyptian Turquoise is still mined from the original, ancient mines of the Sinai Peninsula". [5] I suspect that there's not much left. Alansplodge (talk) 21:19, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! --Vyacheslav84 (talk) 19:26, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

@Vyacheslav84: Mindat.org gives Wadi Maghareh in the South Sinai Governorate as the only locality in Egypt for Turquoise. See here and here. DuncanHill (talk) 21:05, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! --Vyacheslav84 (talk) 04:55, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

I had turquoise mined from the Sinai. I gave it away a few years ago to someone who was a fan of the mineral. If I knew it was rare, I would have never given it away. Viriditas (talk) 23:54, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Energy price development

Have energy prices actually risen anywhere else like they have in Germoney... sorry, mean Germany? 2A02:8071:60A0:92E0:856B:25F3:1ABA:A66D (talk) 20:02, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Household electricity prices worldwide in March 2023, by select country suggests that Germany is not an outlier. That Putin fellow has given everyone a hard time. Alansplodge (talk) 21:27, 14 October 2023 (UTC)

Fossil fuels and other forms of energy are traded on a world-wide market, so prices are correlated. There're still differences resulting from trade embargoes, transport costs, conversion costs (turning fossil fuels to electricity costs money; how much depends on the fuel you use and the technology used in your power station), taxation and subsidies. You can count on the prices being tightly correlated within the EU.

If you're referring to petrol, I think that Germany has, compared to other countries in Western Europe, relatively low tax and high sales. That means that an increase in the price of crude oil has a relatively large effect on the petrol price and the government has limited ability to do something about it by lowering taxes. When petrol hit well over €2/litre (for the Americans, that's about 8–9 dollars per gallon), German tank tourists even visited the Netherlands to buy petrol, while normally the opposite happens. PiusImpavidus (talk) 09:23, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

"German tank tourists even visited the Netherlands" - an odd turn of phrase, open to an unfortunate historical interpretation. By "tank tourists" do you mean people crossing the border just to fill up? Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:38, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Dutch has the term tanktoerisme, possibly borrowed from German (!) Tanktourismus, a form of cross-border shopping in which the shoppers fuel their vehicles, called tanken in both Dutch and German. The first component of Tanktourismus derives from the stem of this verb.  --Lambiam 08:00, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Note that German Tank always means fuel tank, never tank (which is Panzer). Joking about using tanks to go to other countries has cost some German politicians their careers [6]. —Kusma (talk) 08:10, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I was referring to people crossing the border to fill up their fuel tank. Petrol stations get built as close to the border as possible. It's a significant source of government income in some small countries like Luxembourg and Andorra. And there are absolutely no hard feelings against the Germans in the Netherlands any more. PiusImpavidus (talk) 08:43, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks all. There is always a danger in translating idiom, generally it doesn't work. As an anglophone I have never heard the words "tanktoerisme" or "Tanktourismus". As I said, it just seemed an odd phrase in an English language encyclopaedia. As regards hard feelings; my Mother was in Coventry during the Blitz and I grew up playing on bomb sites in the West Midlands, and yet now it is good to see my sons learning German and visiting the country for cultural and recreational activities. Time marches on and keeping old wounds open doesn't help, I could name several places where a battle of 300 or 3,000 years ago still causes division and bloodshed today. Kusma, the link seems to have some sort of demand for money and something about cookies headed "Tagespiegel". Unfortunately Google translate doesn't translate such pop-ups. Regards, Martin of Sheffield (talk) 09:34, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Wikt:tanken#German says that it's borrowed from the English [fuel] tank. The German word for the armoured vehicle type of tank is famously Panzerkampfwagen - why use one short word when you can stick lots of words together and make a really long one? Alansplodge (talk) 17:43, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, to read Tagesspiegel you need to either accept cookies or pay money. The story I linked to isn't really worth either. —Kusma (talk) 09:54, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

It is about a young CDU politician who wrote on an Internet forum, "Nach Frankreich fahr ich nur auf Ketten" ("I only go to France on track"; German Kette means "chain" but is also used as short for Gleiskette, meaning "continuous track" such as used for tanks). This was not his only war-glorifying statement made publicly; he also volunteered the opinion that had he been a crusader, "we" would still have Jerusalem.  --Lambiam 20:10, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the précis Lambian. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 20:36, 16 October 2023 (UTC)