mental-post: France

Showing posts with label France. Show all posts

France, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Greece, and Australia have always been in the modern Olympics since it began in 1896

The Olympic Games are considered to be the world’s foremost sports competition with more than 200 nations participating. The Olympic Games are held quadrennially, (every four years) with the Summer and Winter Games alternating, meaning they each occur every four years but two years apart. Their creation was inspired by the ancient Olympic Games, which were held in Olympia, Greece, from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD. BaronPierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1894. The IOC is the governing body of the Olympic Movement, with the Olympic Charter defining its structure and authority.

The evolution of the Olympic Movement during the 20th and 21st centuries has resulted in several changes to the Olympic Games. Some of these adjustments include the creation of the Winter Games for ice and winter sports, the Paralympic Games for athletes with a disability, and the Youth Olympic Games for teenage athletes. The IOC has had to adapt to a variety of economic, political, and technological advancements. As a result, the Olympics shifted away from pure amateurism, as envisioned by Coubertin, to allow participation of professional athletes. The growing importance of mass media created the issue of corporate sponsorship and commercialization of the Games. World wars led to the cancellation of the 1916, 1940, and 1944 Games. Large boycotts during the Cold War limited participation in the 1980 and 1984 Games.

As part of the original design, the names of 72 French scientists and other famous people is imprinted on the sides of the Eiffel tower

On the Eiffel Tower, seventy-two names of French scientists, engineers, and mathematicians are engraved in recognition of their contributions. Eiffel chose this “invocation of science” because of his concern over the protests against the tower. The engravings are found on the sides of the tower under the first balcony. The engraving was painted over at the beginning of the twentieth century and restored in 1986–1987 by Société Nouvelle d’exploitation de la Tour Eiffel, a company contracted to operate business related to the Tower. The Tower is owned by the city of Paris. The letters were originally painted in gold and are about 60 cm high. The repainting of 2010/2011 restored the letters to their original gold colour.

The list is split in four parts (for each side of the tower). The sides have been named after the parts of Paris that each side faces.

Within Leonardo Da Vinci's own lifetime his fame was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died.

Interest in Leonardo has never diminished. The crowds still queue to see his most famous artworks, T-shirts bear his most famous drawing, and writers continue to marvel at his genius and speculate about his private life and, particularly, about what one so intelligent actually believed in.

Giorgio Vasari, in the enlarged edition of Lives of the Artists, 1568, introduced his chapter on Leonardo da Vinci with the following words:

In the normal course of events many men and women are born with remarkable talents; but occasionally, in a way that transcends nature, a single person is marvellously endowed by Heaven with beauty, grace and talent in such abundance that he leaves other men far behind, all his actions seem inspired and indeed everything he does clearly comes from God rather than from human skill. Everyone acknowledged that this was true of Leonardo da Vinci, an artist of outstanding physical beauty, who displayed infinite grace in everything that he did and who cultivated his genius so brilliantly that all problems he studied he solved with ease.

The Hundred Years War lasted for 116 years

The Hundred Years’ War was a series of conflicts waged from 1337 to 1453 between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of France for control of the French throne. Many allies of both sides were also drawn into the conflict. The war had its roots in a dynastic disagreement dating back to the time of William the Conqueror, who became King of England in 1066 while retaining possession of the Duchy of Normandy in France. As the rulers of Normandy and other lands on the continent, the English kings owed feudal homage to the king of France. In 1337,Edward III of England refused to pay homage to Philip VI of France, leading the French king to claim confiscation of Edward’s lands in Aquitaine.

Edward responded by declaring that he, not Philip, was the rightful king of France, a claim dating to 1328, when Charles IV of France died without a male heir. Edward was the closest male relative of Charles IV as son of Isabella of France, daughter of Philip IV of France and sister of Charles IV. But instead, Philip VI, the son of Philip IV’s younger brother, Charles of Valois, was crowned king of France in accordance with Salic Law, which disqualified female succession and the succession of males descended through female lines. The question of legal succession to the French crown was central to the war over generations of English and French claimants.

The war is commonly divided into three phases separated by truces: the Edwardian Era War (1337–1360), the Caroline War (1369–1389) and the Lancastrian War (1415–1453), which saw the slow decline of English fortunes after the appearance of Joan of Arc in 1429. Contemporary European conflicts directly related to this conflict were the Breton War of Succession, theCastilian Civil War, the War of the Two Peters, and the 1383-1385 Crisis. The term “Hundred Years’ War” is a periodization invented later by historians to encompass all of these events.

In 1783, the hot air balloon was invented in France.

The hot air balloon is the oldest successful human-carrying flight technology. It is part of a class of aircraft known as balloon aircraft. On November 21, 1783, in Annonay, France, the first untethered manned flight was performed by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes in a hot air balloon created on December 14, 1782 by the Montgolfier brothers. Hot air balloons that can be propelled through the air rather than just being pushed along by the wind are known as airships or, more specifically, thermal airships.
A hot air balloon consists of a bag called the envelope that is capable of containing heated air. Suspended beneath is a gondola or wicker basket (in some long-distance or high-altitude balloons, a capsule), which carries passengers and (usually) a source of heat, in most cases an open flame. The heated air inside the envelope makes it buoyant since it has a lower density than the relatively cold air outside the envelope. As with all aircraft, hot air balloons cannot fly beyond the atmosphere. Unlike gas balloons, the envelope does not have to be sealed at the bottom since the air near the bottom of the envelope is at the same pressure as the air surrounding. For modern sport balloons the envelope is generally made from nylon fabric and the inlet of the balloon (closest to the burner flame) is made from fire resistant material such as Nomex. Beginning during the mid-1970s, balloon envelopes have been made in all kinds of shapes, such as rocket ships and the shapes of various commercial products, though the traditional shape remains popular for most non-commercial, and many commercial, applications.

Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise located in Paris is the most visited cemetery in the world. The cemetery opened in 1805 and has over one million people buried there, including rock star Jim Morrison

Père Lachaise is in the 20th arrondissement, and is reputed to be the world’s most visited cemetery, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually to the graves of those who have enhanced French life over the past 200 years. It is also the site of three World War I memorials.

The cemetery is on Boulevard de Ménilmontant (fr). The Paris Métro station Philippe Auguste on line 2 is next to the main entrance, while the station called Père Lachaise, on both lines 2 and 3, is 500 metres away near a side entrance. Many tourists prefer the Gambetta station on line 3, as it allows them to enter near the tomb of Oscar Wilde and then walk downhill to visit the rest of the cemetery.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is the world's largest predominantly French speaking country

French is the official language of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is meant to be an ethnically neutral language, to ease communication among the many different ethnic groups of the Congo.

Approximately 242 languages are spoken in the country, but only four have the status of national languages: Kikongo (Kituba), Lingala,Tshiluba and Swahili. Although some people speak these regional, or trade languages, as first languages, most of the population speak them as a second language after their own tribal language. Primary education tends to be in the national Bantu language of the region, and secondary education, and beyond, tends to be in French. Lingala was made the official language of the colonial army, the “Force Publique” under Belgian colonial rule. But since the recent rebellions, a good part of the army in the East also uses Swahili where it is prevalent. When the country was a Belgian colony, it had already instituted teaching and use of the four national languages in primary schools, making it one of the few African nations to have had literacy in local languages during the European colonial period. During the colonial period both Dutch and French were the official languages but French was by far the most important. About 24,320,000 people of DRC speak French either as a first or second language.

Source

Croissants are not French, they are Austrian

The Kipferl, ancestor of the croissant, has been documented in Austria going back at least as far as the 13th century, in various shapes. The Kipferl can be made plain or with nut or other fillings (some consider the rugelach a form of Kipferl).

The “birth” of the croissant itself – that is, its adaptation from the plainer form of Kipferl, before the invention of Viennoiserie – can be dated with some precision to at latest 1839 (some say 1838), when an Austrian artillery officer, August Zang, founded a Viennese bakery (“Boulangerie Viennoise”) at 92, rue de Richelieu in Paris. This bakery, which served Viennese specialities including the Kipferl and the Vienna loaf, quickly became popular and inspired French imitators (and the concept, if not the term, viennoiserie, a 20th-century term for supposedly Vienna-style pastries). The French version of the Kipferl was named for its crescent (croissant) shape.

Alan Davidson, editor of the Oxford Companion to Food, found no printed recipe for the present-day croissant in any French recipe book before the early 20th century; the earliest French reference to a croissant he found was among the “fantasy or luxury breads” in Payen’s Des substances alimentaires, 1853. However, early recipes for non-laminated croissants can be found in the nineteenth century and at least one reference to croissants as an established French bread appeared as early as 1850.

Zang himself returned to Austria in 1848 to become a press magnate, but the bakery remained popular for some time after, and was mentioned in several works of the time: “This same M. Zank…founded around 1830, in Paris, the famous Boulangerie viennoise”. Several sources praise this bakery’s products: “Paris is of exquisite delicacy; and, in particular, the succulent products of the Boulangerie Viennoise”; ”which seemed to us as fine as if it came from the Viennese bakery on the rue de Richelieu”.

By 1869, the croissant was well established enough to be mentioned as a breakfast staple, and in 1872, Charles Dickens wrote (in his periodical All the Year Round) of:

the workman’s pain de ménage and the soldier’s pain de munition, to the dainty croissant on the boudoir table

The puff pastry technique which now characterizes the croissant was already mentioned in the late 17th century, when La Varenne’s Le Cuisinier françois gave a recipe for it in the 1680 – and possibly earlier – editions. It was typically used, not on its own, but for shells holding other ingredients (as in a vol-au-vent). But it does not appear to be mentioned in relation to the croissant until the twentieth century.

Source

A French painter was highly acclaimed by art critics in 1964. What they didn't know is that the artist was actually a chimpanzee

In 1964 an art exhibition was held in the Swedish city of Göteborg. The work of previously unknown French painter, Pierre Brassau, attracted much attention. Art critic Rolf Anderberg wrote in the morning Posten: "Pierre Brassau paints with powerful strokes but also with clean determination. His brush strokes twist with a furious fastidiousness on the canvas ... Pierre is an artist who performs with the delicacy of a ballet dancer." One private collector bought Brassau's painting for $90 (equivalent to $500- $1000 in 2006).

Pierre Brassau turned out to be an ape.

Two pranksters, Åke "Dacke" Axelsson (a journalist) and Yngve Funkegård (an artist) gave a brush and paints to the chimp, named Peter, from local Borås zoo. The ape took to art like duck to water. The pranksters hung his work in a gallery under the brush name of Pierre Brassau.

When the hoax was revealed, art critic Anderberg still insisted that Pierre's work, was the best painting in the exhibition. Not everyone was fooled by the monkey work however. Another art critic wrote: "Only an ape could have done this." And what about you? Can you tell an immortal masterpiece of abstract art from monkey work?

Source

The Eiffel Tower has been the inspiration for the creation of over 30 duplicates and similar towers around the world.

The Eiffel Tower was the inspiration for the Blackpool Tower in Blackpool, England. After visiting the Great Paris Exhibition in 1889, the town's mayor John Bickerstaffe commissioned the building of the tower, which has a very similar design and was completed 1894. The main differences are that the Blackpool Tower is approximately half the height of the Eiffel Tower and is not freestanding, the base being contained within buildings which house the Tower Circus. Both the Eiffel Tower and Blackpool Tower feature on the list of the World Federation of Great Towers.