Names. The poet Kahlil Gibran's name is actually spelt (rather, transliterated) Khalil; the misspelling crept in when he moved to the United States and stuck ever since.
People. T.E. Lawrence, of Lawrence of Arabia fame, (and not just an action hero. Aside from being an astute political negotiator and soldier, he had literary skill as can be seen in his Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a memoir of the Arab campaign) later in life joined the RAF under an assumed name, but died in a motorcycle crash soon after his term of service ended.
Geography. The Russian territory of Kaliningrad is sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, and is not connected by land to the rest of Russia. It is perhaps better known by its Prussian name of Konigsberg, being the inspiration for the mathematical problem of the Seven Bridges of Konigsberg.
Chemistry. The Scoville Scale is used to rate the hotness of chillies. The test was originally a simple taste test coupled with serial dilution (the hotter a chilli, the more dilution required for the hot principle to be rarefied beyond detection), but now makes use of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC).
Nomenclature. The discover of barbiturates, von Baeyer, named them after a woman named Barbara, who might have been his mistress or lover, or more prosaically, after St Barbara, the patron saint of artillerymen (since Prussia defeated Denmark at war in the same year of his discovery).
Ruminations, in the absence of a rumen, become rather public affairs.
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