Les Escargots' "French Firsts"! Quiz

Answer: Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte

Mari snail explains: Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte was born in 1763 in Pau, south- west France and was one of Napoleon's Marshals. He was a committed republican and considered a traitor by the French when he was adopted by the childless Charles XIV of Sweden in 1810 and made heir to the Swedish throne.
In 1814 he incorporated Norway into Sweden and in 1818 became King Charles XIV of Sweden and Charles III of Norway. He died in Stockholm in 1844 having never managed to learn to speak Norwegian or Swedish. His son became Oscar I of Sweden and Norway.

Lucien Bonaparte was Napoleon's brother. Pasquale Paoli was a Corsican leader who forced Napoleon to flee, with his family, to France.

"So," said Redviking snail "did La belle Jeanne go to his coronation?"
"No," sighed Mari, "she couldn't find anything to wear.

Answer: 'Ulysses' by James Joyce

"Bit of an old flapper was Francie, so I've been told," says Skumma snail. Worked in a bookshop in Paris and used to guillotine the pages with her teeth!"

Sylvia Beach was the American born daughter of a Presbyterian minister. She was an ardent feminist and started the bookshop with her friend and partner Adrienne Monnier. Sylvia admired avant-garde writers and when she met Joyce she recognised his genius and supported him and his family out of her own pocket.

When 'Ulysses' proved impossible to publish in Britain or the United States due to the obscenity laws, she offered to publish it in France (though some sources believe it was Joyce himself who first suggested this to her). In the event, the book appeared and the limited editions were eagerly snapped up.

Answer: Scandinavia

"Oh that was my ancestor, Lief Nibblersson, the only snail in our family to go to sea. He was picked up on a cabbage leaf when the Normans were gathering supplies for the voyage." said Mari snail. "So he was a stowaway!" said Julie snail. "Oh yes " replied Mari, "by the time they landed, he'd stowed away 27 cabbages and 2 bunches of celery!"

William was born in Falaise, Normandy around 1028. He was the illegitimate son of of Robert I, Duke of Normandy. When Harold was crowned king of England in 1066, William decided his claim to the English crown was better. He set sail from France, defeated Harold and his army to become the first Norman king of England. William was crowned in Westminster Abbey on Christmas day 1066 and became known as 'William the Conqueror'and French became the new language of the English aristocracy.

The Normans were the descendants of Vikings who who came down from Scandinavia and conquered north west France (Normandy). The name Normans means 'Northmen' or 'Norsemen'.

Answer: Jacques Heim and Louis Réard

"I can just make out the names now. Listen to this" said Skumma snail.

Louis Réard (a French engineer) and Jacques Heim (a French fashion designer) presented their new two piece swim wear in July 1946 at a show in Paris. It was advertised as the 'smallest swim suit' in the world. They were forced to employ Micheline Bernardini, a nude dancer to model the new string bikini with G-string back, as no one else had the nerve to wear it. It was called the bikini after the nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll, because Réard and Heim thought it would cause a burst of excitement across the world! It did! It was banned in many Catholic countries and Hollywood was pressured by 'Decency groups' not to feature it in films.

However, the idea of a two piece swimsuit was not new. Greek urns dating from 1400 B.C. depicted women wearing a similar style costume and in the 1930s bikini style costumes were popular in Germany. Brigitte Bardot helped to create a market in Europe for the new style bikini and it wasn't long before the rest of the world embraced the idea.

"Any pictures in that book?" said Daboosh snail "No? Okay just asking".
"Does anyone remember 'Dr No', the James Bond film?" asked Mysfloss snail. "Ursula Andress emerging from the sea wearing a white bikini. I believe it was voted number one in Channel 4's 100 sexy moments in films."
"Hehe!" sniggered Xgunny snail, "How could we forget?"

Answer: The modern Olympic Games

Pierre de Coubertin, born in Paris, strongly believed that sport was important part of personal development. Due to archaeological finds at Olympia in Greece, international interest in the ancient games was growing. Coubertin had the idea of an international competition which would help promote athletics. At the Sorbonne, on June 23rd in 1894, he proposed the reinstating of the Greek Olympic Games. This led to the forming of the International Olympic Committee and the decision that the Games would be held every fours years with the first games played in Athens, Greece.

"So your great great uncle knew this guy?" asked Bordas snail.
"Yes" replied Skumma, "Coubertin was fond of rugby and was the referee at the first French Rugby Union championship final in 1892. He sometimes played rugby with my great great uncle when he couldn't find a rugby ball!"

Answer: All these answers are correct

"Yes," says Fonty snail "I believe that I had an ancestor who lived in the Comte de Bougainville's garden"

Bougainville was given permission by King Louis XV in 1766 to circumnavigate the globe, the 14th to do this but the first Frenchman. He left France with two ships, La Boudeuse and L'Etoile. When they reached Tahiti it was discovered that Philibert Commerçon, the ship's botanist, had brought along his mistress disguised as his valet and dressed as a boy so Jeanne Baré became the first woman ever to circumnavigate the globe.

The Bougainvillea, named after the Comte who discovered it in Brazil in 1768, is a thorny vine type plant with clusters of vibrant coloured flowers ; magenta, red, purple, yellow and more.

All over the French, and other European, Mediterranean areas, Bougainvillea is found rambling over buildings and walls, growing up to three metres long. It's now grown almost everywhere that has a frost-free climate. A truly beautiful plant and not difficult to cultivate.

Answer: Belgium

"A bit of a controversial one", says Rvallejo001 snail "as there is no definitive evidence. According to the Belgium historian, Jo Gerrad, fried potatoes originated in 1680 in the Spanish Netherlands, a region which now modern day Belgium."

In Belgium, and the Netherlands, French fries are called 'patat', in France (and Germany) 'pommes frites' and in Britain 'chips'.

"Why do they get called French fries then?" asked littlemouse snail.
"Well" replies Korrigan snail "I heard a story that when American solders bought Belgium fries during WW1, they named them French fries because French was the official language of the Belgium army."
"That can't be right!" says Knight snail "I heard that the term 'French fry' was being used in American recipes books from the 1850s".

What can be said for sure is that 'French fries' have become the national snack of both Belgium and Holland. It appears that the only language to refer to them as 'French fries' is English and the term almost certainly originated in America.

Answer: The Daguerreotype - the first practical process of photography

Mari snail explains:
Although the first permanent photograph was made by another Frenchman, Nicèphore Nièpce, in 1826, his version was of poor quality and took about eight hours to expose.

Daguerre's (1787-1851) process required only twenty to thirty minutes and known as the daguerreotype. Daguerre was a French painter and physicist, who started life as an inland revenue officer and scene painter for the opera. Daguerre and Nièpce were partners in developing Nièpce's "heliography process" from 1829 until Nièpce's death in 1833.

Daguerre continued Nièpce's experiments after his death, also discovered that exposing an iodized silver plate in a camera gave a lasting image, if the image on the plate was exposed to fumes of mercury, and then fixed by a common salt solution. This discovery led to Daguerre being appointed an officer of the Legion of Honour , and in 1839 he and Nièpce's heir were assigned annuities (6,000 francs for Daguerre and 4,000 Francs for Nièpce's heir) in return for their photographic process.

Bifocal eye glasses (the combination of both concave and convex lenses) were developed by Benjamin Franklin in 1760. The telescope is an invention credited to the German/Dutch lens maker Hans Lippershey in 1608.

Answer: Jean-François Champollion

"That's cool", says Daboosh "because the Rosetta Stone was found near the Egyptian port of Rosetta in 1799 by Captain Pierre-François Bouchard, an army engineer working on the construction of a fort following Napoleon's capture of Egypt the previous year."

In 1801 it came into possession of the British, and no-one is quite sure how, and has been exhibited in the British Museum ever since. The inscription on the stone is three versions of a decree by Ptolemy III - in Egyptian hieroglyphic, demotic and classical Greek. Thomas Young, the British scientist, translated the demotic text in 1814 and then began work on translating the hieroglyphics. But, it was Jean-François Champollion who working between 1822 and 1824, finally expanded and completed the work. His 1824 work 'Précis du système hiéroglyphique' gave birth to the field of modern Egyptology and he is now known as "the translator of the Rosetta Stone."

Answer: Louis Braille

Lizzie snail reminds Fonty because he is now a very sleepy snail.
"Louis Braille" started Liz, "was blinded at the age of 10 when he accidentally stabbed himself in the eye.

In 1821 he met Charles Barbier, a French army officer, who had been working on a system to allow soldiers to communicate silently and without light. Braille took and simplified this system into a method that allowed the blind to read and write. Each Braille character is made up of a rectangle of up to six raised dots. Each character can be "read" by the single touch of a fingertip. Braille later went on to extend his system to mathematics and music."

"Well" carried on Lizzie snail "It must be time for bed."