88 Chic Facts About France You’ll Wish You Had Known Before

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26Child beauty pageants

Child beauty pageants

Child beauty pageants are illegal in France, and punishable with up to 2 years in prison.


27. Despite the Seven Years' War between Britain and France, France instructed its ships not to interfere with the Endeavour's expedition to Tahiti to observe the 1769 Transit of Venus as it was ‘out on enterprises of service to all mankind'.


28. In France, by law, a bakery has to make all the bread it sells from scratch in order to have the right to be called a bakery


29. In France, nearly 96% of high schools have condom vending machines


30. A man named Victor Lustig in France impersonated a government official, and managed to sell the Eiffel Tower not once, but twice.


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31France

France

France is the only country in Europe to be completely self-sufficient in basic food production.


32. The first Tour de France winner (Maurice Garin) was disqualified because he cheated by taking the train


33. In France and Belgium, there is a folk character called "The Whipping Father" who accompanies St. Nicholas. He beats naughty children with sticks and carries them away in a bag.


34. When Napoleon emancipated the Jews he stated that "I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France, because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country"


35. There is a grocery store named "Thanksgiving" in Paris that sells U.S. "cuisine" like Pop-Tarts, Heinz ketchup, and Skippy peanut butter to homesick ex-pats.


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36Louis Rèard

Louis Rèard

When Louis Rèard introduced the bikini in France in 1946, no models were willing to wear such revealing swimwear, so Rèard had to hire a stripper to model it.


37. While playing a game of Chess in France, Benjamin Franklin took his opponent's King after she inadvertently put it in check. When she said, "Ah, we don't take kings so" Franklin replied, "We do in America."


38. 5-time Tour de France winner, Miguel Indurain, had a resting heart rate of just 28 BPM. The average person rests at about 60 BPM.


39. France has done more nuclear weapons testing than the UK, China, Pakistan, India and North Korea combined


40. In France, it is illegal to deny that the holocaust happened.


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41Co-Prince of Andorra

Co-Prince of Andorra

The President of France is also the Co-Prince of Andorra. Therefore, Andorra is the only country in the world that has a democratically elected monarch.


42. Since 1997, a castle (Guédelon) is being built in France with the same materials, tools, and methods used by people in the 13th century. Scheduled to be completed in the 2020's.


43. In 1956 Britain, France, and Israel invaded Egypt to get back the Suez Canal. Despite being a military success and having minor losses, it had so much political fallout that most historians consider it the end of Britain as a superpower.


44. When a French artist is killed during the war, the government has a "died for France" designation which extends their post-mortem copyrights by 30 years


45. In the mid-1800s France gave out a crucial patent in photography for free as a gift to the world except for Britain. They had to pay.


46Women pants

Women pants

It was illegal for women of Paris to wear pants, till Feb/2013, when France lifted the 200-year-old ban


47. Mercury use in hat-making, which causes "Mad Hatters Disease", was banned in France in 1898, However, the practice continued in the US until 1941, despite 80% of hatmakers being diagnosed with "mercurial tremors", until it was abandoned due to the wartime need for mercury.


48. In 1978, France rolled out a pre-World Wide Web online service (Minitel) that gave its users access to online shopping, search engines, cybersex, message boards etc. France Telecom only retired the service in 2012 after 30 years and 800,000 units still in use.


49. Areas of France so polluted with vast amounts of human and animal remains and millions of items of unexploded ordnance from WWI that no human activity is allowed there.


50. The purpose of the Declaration of Independence was to gain the support of the monarchies of France and Spain, who would not support a rebellion against a legitimate monarchy (England), but they would support America as an independent nation.

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