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This is a selection of recently created new articles on Wikipedia that were featured on the France Portal as part of
Did you know ? (most recent on top):
...that the
Canal de Marseille , built in 1849, is an 80 kilometres (50 mi)
canal which runs through
Provence to bring water from the
Durance to
Marseille , in
France ?
...that the
Éolienne Bollée (pictured) is a true
turbine that is worked by the wind and, unlike modern
wind turbines , has a
stator and a
rotor ?
...that the
Chemin de Fer de la Baie de Somme is a preserved
railway in France that has
dual gauge track with four
rails ?
...that meetings of the
Committee of Public Safety , the de facto executive government during the
Reign of Terror of the
French Revolution , were convened at the
Pavillon de Flore in
Paris '
Palais du Louvre ?
...that both former
German Federal Minister of Labor
Norbert Blüm and former
Secretary of State of
France
Alain Vivien have been recognized with the
Leipzig Human Rights Award ?
...that
Etaples Military Cemetery (pictured) is the largest
Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemetery in France, with over 11,500 burials?
...that after the
Champagne region, the
Loire Valley produces more
sparkling wine than any other region in
France ?
...that the
Great French Wine Blight , caused by the deadly
phylloxera , destroyed over 40% of France's
vineyards in the mid-19th century?
...that
Gavrinis , an island in the
Gulf of Morbihan off the coast of
Brittany ,
France , has a rich abundance of
megalithic art from the
New Stone Age ?
...that the French physician and agronomist
Jules Guyot revolutionized the training of
grape
vines , and the Guyot-system is extensively used throughout
vineyards in Europe?
...that
French artist
Antoine Berjon's variations on flower painting included a
still life with a shark's head?
...that the
Great French Wine Blight , caused by the deadly
phylloxera , destroyed over 40% of France's
vineyards in the mid-19th century?
...that
Gavrinis , an island in the
Gulf of Morbihan off the coast of
Brittany ,
France , has a rich abundance of
megalithic art from the
New Stone Age ?
...that the French physician and agronomist
Jules Guyot revolutionized the training of
grape
vines , and the Guyot-system is extensively used throughout
vineyards in Europe?
...that
French artist
Antoine Berjon's variations on flower painting included a
still life with a shark's head?
...that
Marthe Richard was a former
prostitute and
spy who worked to make
brothels illegal in
France ?
...that
Du battant des lames au sommet des montagnes (
French for "From the beating of the waves to the summit of the mountains") is a
legal description of the manner in which the island of
Réunion was divided into parcels?
...that the French-designed
Minié rifle was the dominant
infantry weapon of the
American Civil War ?
...that
Louis-Sébastien Lenormand invented what is now known as
BASE jumping by parachuting from the tower of the
Montpellier
observatory in 1783 (
jump illustrated ), and also coined the word
parachute ?
...that despite plagiarizing a Chinese-French-Latin
dictionary ordered by Napoleon,
Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes went on to become a member of the
French Academy of Sciences ?
...that the late-15th century
Missa L'homme armé super voces musicales , a setting of the
Ordinary of the Mass , is one of the most famous works composed by
Josquin des Prez ?
...that
Gavroche , a character from the novel
Les Misérables by
Victor Hugo , lives inside an unfinished statue of an
elephant in
Paris ?
...that
Barnabé Brisson's 1559 De Verborum became the standard
legal dictionary of the time and an authoritative source for
lexicographers for centuries afterwards?
...that
Ladurée , which sells 15,000
macaroons per day, opened a
tea house in its
Parisian pastry shop in the 1930s, to cater for society ladies, who at that time were not admitted to
cafés ?
...that
Free French Forces liberated all of
French Equatorial Africa from
Vichy France in November 1940 in the
Battle of Gabon ?
...that
Louis IX of France resided in the
walled city of
Villeneuve-sur-Yonne before departing on the
Eighth Crusade , during which he died in
1270 near
Tunis ?
...that
Sophie Blanchard was the first woman to work as a professional
balloonist and became the first woman to be killed in an
aviation accident ?
...that
Guy de Rothschild temporarily moved to
New York when the
French Government under
François Mitterrand nationalized
his bank ?
...that French soprano
Germaine Lubin was imprisoned for three years after World War II for her alleged support of Nazi Germany?
...that Alix, the wife of Viscount of Rochechouart Aymeric VI, was imprisoned in
Château de Rochechouart castle with a lion, but the animal did not hurt her and laid down at her feet?
... that
Henri Pitot was responsible for disproving the prevailing belief that speed of water increases with depth!
...that the
Château de Courances has been acclaimed as "the epitome of the French formal garden style in which château and environment form a whole"?
...that, four years before her death,
Madame de Pompadour paid almost 1,000,000
livres to buy the
Château de Menars , selling some
pearl bracelets to meet the first payment?
...that the
French Congress is the name given to the body created when both houses of the present-day
French Parliament – the
French National Assembly and the
French Senate – reunite at the
Château of Versailles to vote on revisions to the
French constitution ?
...that
The Counterfeiters (
French : Les faux-monnayeurs ) was a 1925 novel by French author
André Gide ?
...that
Princess Louise-Marie of France , the youngest of the 10 children of
Louis XV of France and his Queen consort
Maria Leszczyńska , amazed the court when she asked her father to allow her to become a
Carmelite nun in 1770?
...that during the
Ulm Campaign in 1805, French forces under
Napoleon Bonaparte eliminated an entire
Austrian army by capturing 60,000 troops?
...that French neoclassical architect
Jean Chalgrin died before the completion of his most recognizable work, the
Arc de Triomphe ?
...that the actor
Michel Galabru was born in
Safi ,
Morocco and worked with directors such as
Bernard Blier ,
Costa Gavras ,
Luc Besson and
Jean-Luc Godard ?
...that the exterior walls of the
Château de Madrid were covered in
majolica and
high relief , and as a result it was nicknamed the "Château de
Faïence " ?
...that the CPE, or "
First Employment Contract " , was dubbed by some opponents the "
Kleenex contract", implying that the CPE allowed employers to discard young people like
facial tissue ?
...that the
SI unit of charge, the
coulomb , and
Coulomb's law are named after French revolution-era physicist
Charles-Augustin de Coulomb ?
...that the famous
Wallace fountains in
Paris were provided by English philanthropist
Richard Wallace as a source of free water for the poor?
...that the amusement park "
Vulcania " was founded by
Valéry Giscard d'Estaing as an incentive to bring tourism to
Auvergne ?
...that
Roger Lemerre has won the
Football World Cup ,
European Football Championship ,
Confederations Cup and the
African Nations Cup ?
...that
Jean-Marie Perrot was assassinated during
World War II and since then has been remembered in parts of
Brittany on
Easter Monday ?
...that
French Army soldiers killed between 15,000 and 45,000
Algerian civilians in the
Setif massacre of May 8, 1945, the same day as
VE day in
Europe ?
...that despite having no inhabitants, the
commune of
Bezonvaux is administered by 3 municipal councillors?
...that the
French battleship France sunk after hitting an uncharted rock during a patrol of
Quiberon Bay on August 26, 1922 ?
...that
Rennes is the smallest town in the world to have
its own metro ?