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”
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.
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.
The bikini was invented
in 1946 by two French designers working independently of each other. Jacques
Heim was 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.
The
stripes of the French flag are equal width, except on the version used by
the Navy, where the red stripe is biggest.
George’s Perec’s 1969 novel,
La Disparition, does not contain the letter E.
Cinderella didn’t have
glass slippers until Parisian Charles Perrault made his own version of an old
Chinese tale. It's often thought this was a mistranslation in the English
version, but Perrault specifically refers to glass, not squirrel fur. The
confusion is from the similarities of ‘verre’ and ‘vair’.
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