French Facts: 20 trivia snippets

20 facts about France, including the Statue of Liberty, the Mona Lisa, nuclear power, Reunion's first Euro, the Bayeux tapestry, Bastille Day, Cinderella and more.

It may be trivia, but it sure is interesting. There's more to France than you first thought...

1. The Languedoc-Rousillon city of Nîmes is the birthplace of jeans. The distinctive fabric was imported to California by Levi Strauss in order to make tough work trousers for gold diggers. Denim is short for “de Nîmes”
2. The Statue of Liberty was made in France, and given to the United States as a gift. The statue’s face is thought to be modelled on that of Isabella Eugenie Boyer, the Parisian wife of sewing machine manufacturer Isaac Singer.
3. When Dom Perignon and his Benedictine monk colleagues first stumbled upon champagne, they regarded the bubbles as a serious defect, and were trying to work out ways to eliminate them until they actually had a sip.
4. The Mona Lisa, the most famous painting in the world, let alone the Louvre, has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Florence at the time to shave them off.
5. The bikini was invented at the same time in 1946 by two French designers working independently of each other. Jacques Heim got his out first, calling his two-piece bathing suit l’Atome. However, rival Louis Reard trumped him by hiring a skywriter to advertise his Bikini over the Riviera, and his name stuck.
6. French was the official language of England for over 300 years. No wonder the politicians get uppity when international affairs are conducted in English.
7. France produces more nuclear electricity than Germany, Spain, Russia and the UK combined.
8. Due to time differences, the first ever purchase made using the Euro was in the French overseas département of Reunion. Regional council president bought a bag of lychees from a market in Saint-Denis, the largest city on the Indian Ocean island.
9. Of all the non-landlocked countries in the world, Monaco has the world’s shortest coastline.
10. The Bayeux tapestry, depicting the Norman invasion of Britain in 1066, is not a tapestry at all. It is an embroidered cloth, whilst tapestries are entirely woven.
11. Due to overseas départements and territories. France is spread over four continents – Europe, North America, South America and Antarctica. It is also has shores on the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian and Southern oceans.
12. The highest point of the Millau Viaduct over the River Tarn, the world’s tallest bridge, is higher than the Eiffel Tower, and only marginally lower than the Empire State Building.
13. France’s national day, July 14th, is nothing to do with the storming of the Bastille in 1789. Despite being called Bastille Day in English, the holiday celebrates the Fête de la Fédération, which happened on the same date the year after. Ironically, this massive public feast was originally designed to celebrate the monarchy – not something the revolutionaries of the Bastille will have had in mind.
14. The stripes of the French flag are equal width, except on the version used by the Navy, for which the red stripe is biggest.
15. The French national anthem, La Marseillaise, got its first airing in Strasbourg, not Marseille.
16. George’s Perec’s 1969 novel, La Disparition, does not contain the letter E.
17. Cinderella didn’t have glass slippers until Parisian Charles Perrault made his own version of an old Chinese tale. It is often thought that this came from a mistranslation in the English version, but Perrault specifically refers to glass, not squirrel fur. The confusion comes from the similarities between ‘verre’ and ‘vair’.
18. Under laws that no-one has ever got round to removing from the statute book, it is illegal to call a pig Napoleon.
19. If you laid out the cables used in the lifts of the Eiffel Tower end to end, they would stretch for 16 kilometres.
20. The April Fool (or April Fish to the French) is thought to have originated in France in 1564, when the country switched to the Gregorian calendar. Those that hadn’t heard about the move still thought April 1st was New Year’s Day, and they were bought mock presents by those wanting to make fun of them.

MORE FACTS AND TRIVIA

Countries: Austria, Estonia, France, Italy, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Poland,

Cities: Birmingham, Chicago, Detroit, Paris, Philadelphia, Rome, Sydney, Venice

Regions: Algarve, Aragon, Basque Country, Puglia, Sicily

US States: Arizona,Kentucky, Michigan,Virginia

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