Facts about France

• The Statue of Liberty was made in France and given to the United States as a gift.

• The French national anthem, La Marseillaise, got its first airing in Strasbourg, not Marseille.
• Under laws that no-one has ever got round to removing from the statute book, it is illegal to call a pig Napoleon.
• The French 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.”
• 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 at the same time in 1946 by two French designers working independently of each other. Jacques Heim got his out 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 Mona Lisa, the most famous painting in the world, let alone the Louvre, has no eyebrows. It was the fashion in Florence at the time to shave them off
• The April Fool (or April Fish to the French) is thought to have originated in France in 1564, when the country switched to the Gregorian calendar. Those that hadn’t heard about the move still thought April 1st was New Year’s Day, and they were bought mock presents by those wanting to make fun of them.
• France produces more nuclear electricity than Germany, Spain, Russia and the UK combined.