La Douce France Trivia Quiz

Answer: Coco Chanel

Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel (1883-1971, although she has given other dates of birth) was placed in an orphanage in 1895, where she learned the basic trade of a seamstress. She tried her luck at singing, but her voice apparently was not good enough to pursue a career in music.
In 1906 she became the love interest of Etienne Balsan, a wealthy textile heir. To spend her free time usefully, she started designing hats, and in 1910 Chanel opened her first shop in Paris. Her second lover, Arthur Capel, financed a clothing shop in Deauville.
In 1926 Chanel published a design of a simple cocktail dress, black and reaching just above the knee. She named it the "little black dress" and unconfirmed rumours state that she uttered the words "Every woman should have a little black dress".
The iconic LBD (as the little black dress was soon abbreviated) has since inspired many fashion designers. One of the best known examples was the LBD designed by Givenchy for Audrey Hepburn to wear in the movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's".
Chanel did not only design clothing and accessories, but is also known for the perfumes she sold - especially "No. 5".
Pierre Cardin (born 1922) started a fashion house in 1950. He prefers geometric motifs.
Christian Dior (1905-1957) was another famous French fashion designer. He launched the "New Look" in 1947.
Yves Saint-Laurent (1936-2008) was another successful French fashion designer. He introduced the Beatnik style.

Answer: Loire

France has a surface area of 643,801 km², of which the European part covers about 551,500 km². Indeed, we should not forget that France still has five overseas departments, of which French Guyana is the largest.
The Loire is about 1,013 km long and runs fully in the European territory of France. Alongside the Loire and its tributaries, we find many beautiful castles, as well as many famous vineyards. The Loire ends in the Atlantic Ocean near Saint-Nazaire. The most important cities on the Loire are Orleans, Tours and Nantes. Between Tours and Nantes there is a quite large national park ("Parc Naturel Régional Loire-Anjou-Touraine"). Noteworthy castles on the Loire are Chäteau d'Amboise, Château de Chambord, Chenonceau.
The Seine is about 777 km long and flows through Paris, the French capital.
The Rhine has its origin in Switzerland. It passes through Germany, forms part of the German-French border, and continues through the Netherlands to the North Sea. The total length of the Rhine is circa 1,230 km.
The Maroni River forms the border between Suriname and French Guyana and mouths in the Caribbean Sea. Different sources give different lengths, form 520 km up to 725 km (according to which headwater is to be included).

Answer: Louis the Young

Louis VII the Young (1120-1180) ascended to the throne when his father, Louis VI the Fat (born 1081) died. Louis VII is best known for his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204), whom he married just a few days before his father died and he was crowned king.
In 1147 Louis VII went on crusade, but did not reach Jerusalem, his set goal. Louis and Eleanor quarrelled quite a lot about this crusade, its goal and its cost, and Louis decided to have his marriage to Eleanor annulled - also because she had not given him a male heir. Eleanor remarried to the future King Henry II of England, and this caused quite a controversy about the Aquitaine region: did it belong to France (as a result of Eleanor's first marriage) or to England (resulting from Eleanor's second marriage)? The conflict would in later generations expand to the Hundred Years War.
Louis IX (1214-1270, reigned since 1226) is known in history as Louis the Saint. Indeed, he was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1297.
Louis X (1289-1316) became French King in 1314. He had many feuds with the regional nobility, hence his nickname Louis the Quarreler. Louis X died in July 1316 when he drank cold wine after a game of tennis. Historians claim his successor was his posthumous born son Jean I, but as Jean died after only five days, this claim is disputable.
Louis XIV (1638-1715) became King in 1643. His nickname Louis the Sun King is probably due to his role as the Sun in one of the ballets performed at court: Louis XIV loved ballet, and in his young years danced several roles in several productions.

Answer: Camembert

De Gaulle would once have sighed "How can anyone govern a country with 246 different kinds of cheese?". In another quote the number was altered to 265, and recent lists may show France has even more varieties of cheese.
The original Camembert was made with raw (unpasteurized) milk, but gradually this was replaced with pasteurized cow's milk - at least for the cheaper versions, for the AOC Camembert (Appelation d'Origine Contrôlée - the most important quality label for French cheese) must still be made using raw milk.
The production of Camembert takes several steps: first the milk is heated and injected with some bacteria, then rennet is added to dry the cheese. After ripening 48 hours, the cheese is then again moisturized with a fungus from the Penicillum family, and further matured for three weeks. It is then packed in round wooden boxes.
Roquefort is made from sheep's milk and comes from the region Midi- Pyrenées.
Chevrotin is made from goat's milk in the regions Savoie and Haute-Savoie (near the Alps).
Munster is made from cow's milk in the regions Alsace, Lorraine and Franche-Comté (border with Germany and Switzerland).

Answer: Auguste Rodin

The Directory for the Fine Arts wanted to build a new museum in 1880, and have the entrance decorated by a huge sculpture. The deadline for the entrance and for the museum was 1885, but the museum was never built and the entrance was only partially completed at the death of the sculptor.
It was Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) who received the commission for this entrance. He entitled it "The Gates of Hell" ("La porte de l'enfer") and was inspired by Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" (in Florence) and by Dante's "Divina Commedia".
Rodin had already designed "The Thinker" ("Le penseur") as a separate statue: a nude man sitting with his head resting on one hand, and staring into nothingness. From the placement of this statue on the top frieze of the "Gates of Hell", next to the famous quote "Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate", we deduce that Rodin probably has intended to depict Dante as "Le penseur".
"The Gates of Hell" is about 6 by 4 m, and at least 180 figures are depicted. But as it was not completed, we'll never know how many more figures Rodin wanted to include.
Auguste Rodin was one of the outstanding French sculptors, who worked mostly in cast bronze. Besides "The Gates of Hell" and several statues included in this gate, he also created "The Burghers of Calais" - depicting a dramatic episode, when the six most important citizens had to render the city's keys to the English, and were condemned to be executed in order to spare the rest of the population.
De Court (active 1555-1585) was a French decorator who painted on enamel. Louis Garnier (1639-1728) and Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751-1843) were French sculptors. Garnier worked primarily with cast bronze, while Thomire enhanced bronze decorations with a layer of gilding.

Answer: Jean-Luc Godard

"A bout de souffle" (1960) is a movie about a petty thief (named Poiccard, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo) who accidentally kills a policeman while stealing a car. Together with his American girlfriend (played by Jean Seberg) Poiccard tries to flee France in the stolen car.
Jean-Luc Godard (born 1930) started his career as a movie critic correspondent for "Les cahiers du cinema" and a few short movies. "A bout de souffle" was his first full-feature film, and an iconic example of the French Nouvelle Vague: avant-gardist movies with techniques that at that time were still unused, expressing the personal point of view of the director...
Godard would continue his career with remarkable movies such as "Le mépris" (1963), "Weekend" (1967), "Je vous salue, Marie" (1985) and "Adieu au Langage" (2014).
Truffaut (1932-1984), Chabrol (1930-2010) and Resnais (1922-2014) were other French directors connected to the Nouvelle Vague.
I'll mention some movies of each of them: "Les 400 coups" (1959) and "Le dernier métro" (1980) by Truffaut; "Le beau Serge" (1958) and "L'ivresse du pouvoir" (2006) by Chabrol; "Hiroshima mon amour" (1959) and "Mon oncle d'Amérique" (1980) by Resnais.

Answer: Sully Prudhomme

Prudhomme (1839-1907) was a poet and essayist, best known for the poem "La vase brisé" ("The broken vase"). After winning the Nobel Prize in 1901, Prudhomme founded the "Société des poètes français" (society of French poets) to stimulate poetry in the French language. This organization publishes a quarterly newsletter and collections of (mostly contemporary) poetry. It also has its own bookshop.
Rolland (1866-1944) won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1915. He was a novelist, best known for the Decalogue "Jean Christophe".
Anatole France (1844-1924) won the Nobel Prize in 1921. He wrote poetry, prose fiction, theatre plays, critic works... I'll just name one of his novels: "Thaïs" (1890).
Bergson (1859-1941) was a philosopher. He won the Nobel Prize in 1927. One of the highlights in his oeuvre is the treatise "Matière et mémoire" published in 1896.
Other French Nobel Prize winners in the category Literature include André Gide (1869-1951), Albert Camus (1913-1960), Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Patrick Modiano (born 1945). During the Twentieth Century, French authors won the Nobel Prize for literature fourteen times, more than any other country.

Answer: Gilbert Bécaud

Bécaud (1927-2001) was born under the name François Gilbert Léopold Silly. His best known numbers in French are "Nathalie" (1964) and "Et maintenant" (1961).
His swinging style was quite catchy: one source mentions that the audience at one of his concerts started to move with him, and thus broke the seats of the theatre. The source does not mention who paid the bill for the damages.
Besides singing and song writing, Bécaud took up some acting as well. He appeared in at least eight movies, including "Girl on the Road" (1962).
Gainsbourg (1928-1991) is best known for his duet with Jane Birkin: "Je t'aime - moi non plus".
Brassens (1921-1981) was a French folk singer. One of his songs is "Brave Margot", about a young girl breastfeeding a kitten.
Dutronc (born 1943) took up singing in 1960. One of his recognisable songs is "Il est cinq heures - Paris s'éveille".

Answer: Antoine Lavoisier

Lavoisier (1743-1794) studied chemistry, mathematics, botany and astronomy before getting a degree in law and being appointed as advocate. However, he never worked as a lawyer.
Lavoisier gave advice on water quality and air quality, and thus became interested in experimenting with chemical elements. He studied the burning of sulphur and phosphorus, and finally discovered the elements oxygen (in 1778) and hydrogen (in 1783).
He also was the first to design a periodic table of elements, but as many of those were still undiscovered, the table devised by Mendeleev became more important.
Moissan (1852-1907) won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1906 because of his isolation of the element fluorine.
Pierre Curie (1859-1906) and his wife Marie (née Sklodowska, 1867-1934) discovered the chemical elements radium and polonium. They shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903. Marie would also won the Noble Prize for Chemistry in 1911, and their daughter Irene would win the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935 together with Irene's husband Frédéric Joliot.
Marguerite Perey (1909-1975) studied chemistry from Marie Curie and discovered francium in 1939.

Answer: Modern pentathlon

The modern pentathlon consists of five sections: equestrian (show jumping), fencing, (pistol) shooting, swimming and running (cross country). Since 2009 the shooting and running are combined in one section.
At the Games I've mentioned, all individual athletes competed for the individual medals as well as for the team medals, which were determined by the combined result of the three individual competitors.
In Mexico 1968 the great favourites were Hungary and the Soviet-Union, which took the gold and silver medal respectively. Two of the three Swedish competitors did very well (Bjorn Ferm winning the individual gold medal), but Hans-Gunnar Liljenvall was disqualified for a failed doping test. So Sweden was disregarded for the team medal, and the French delegation of Raoul Gueguen, Lucien Guiguet and Jean-Pierre Giudicelli won the bronze team medal.
In Los Angeles 1984 most of the East-European favourites boycotted the Olympic Games. For the modern pentathlon, this made Italy the absolute favourite. And indeed: Italy won the individual gold and bronze medal, and the team gold medal as well. The Swedish Svante Rasmuson won the silver medal individually, so Sweden was a very strong competitor for the team medal once more. But history repeated itself: the Swedish Roderick Martin missed the first target and shot twice at the second target, resulting in disqualification for this section only. The USA won the team silver medal, and France (Paul Four, Didier Boube and Joel Bouzou) won the bronze team medal. If Roderick Martin had scored regularly on the shooting, France and Sweden would have ended very tight together.
Decathlon (combining ten sections in athletics) has no team competitions.
Fencing has a team competition per event and thus is not divided in sections.
Tug-of-War was a single event for teams until the Olympic Games of 1920 and has since then been discontinued.