Tea and Soap Cakes

Sunday, 1 July 2012

Merci, France was visiting my blog.

Fun French Facts

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’.

Friday, 6 July 2012