Plzen, Czechoslovakia, 1956: This was the electronic assembly line at the Skoda factory.

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Albion have also extended the loan of goalkeeper Michal Danek from Viktoria Plzen until 1 January 2009.

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Slowly at first, then gathering downhill momentum as refrigeration became more reliable, the Plzen Original touched off a world beer revolution.

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Czech side Viktoria Plzen recorded a shock 3-0 win at Napoli , who are currently second in the Italian league.

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Whatever: The Plzen lager now known as Pilsner Urquell (German for "Plzen's Original Source"), came out lighter-bodied and more golden-colored than its Bavarian forerunners.

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After a shock 3-0 home defeat in the Europa League by Czech side Viktoria Plzen on Thursday, Napoli had hoped to bounce back immediately.

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The story goes that the brewers of Plzen had become so disgusted with the quality of their local ale that they dumped 36 barrels of the sludge in front of City Hall.

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The financier, who has swapped his Czech citizenship for Irish, failed to appear in a court in Plzen, a provincial city, on March 17th to testify in the retrial of a former secret-service agent, Vaclav Wallis.

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And although total industrial production went up by a more modest 5%, it exploded in industries with heavy foreign investment: transport production went up by 45%, for example, fuelled by the half-million cars built by Volkswagen-owned Skoda (no relation of Skoda Plzen).

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Still, it wasn't until the 19th century that the science, technology and technique for producing bottom-fermented lagers came together as a methodical process, first at the Spaten ("Spade") brewery in Munich and eventually, around 1842, in the vowel-poor town of Plzen in Bohemia.

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