America’s “Second City” has a long Czech history. Once home to a lively community of immigrants from Bohemia and Moravia, the suburb of Cicero still has a school named after the first Czechoslovak president Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk.
Members of the Czechoslovak Legionaries Association took part in a ceremonial march through Prague to celebrate their 100th anniversary at the weekend.
Journalist and film critic Hynek Pallas grew up in a notable Czech household in Sweden, where his dissident family settled after being forced out of Czechoslovakia.
Dr Františka Schormová was awarded Charles University’s highest academic accolade this spring for her dissertation titled “African American Poets Abroad: Black and Red Allegiances in Early Cold War Czechoslovakia”.
Finding a good bricklayer, carpenter, roofer has long been a challenge in the Czech Republic. By some estimates, the domestic market lacks over 300,000 such craftsmen, leading companies to recruit workers from abroad, in particular from Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine.
Wooden beams from the dome of a church damaged by a tornado in the Moravská Nová Ves village in southern Moravia are being made into a cross for the upcoming visit of Pope Francis to neighbouring Slovakia.