France

1. The word "France" comes from the Franks, a Germanic people whose name is derived from the Frankish "frank", which means "free."

2. France has the largest number of time zones in the world, thanks to its overseas territories (12 different time zones, compared to 10 for the United States and 9 for Russia).

3. The two oldest cities in France would be Marseilles and Béziers, both built by the Greeks in the 6th century BC

4. In France, eggs are brown, but in most other countries (such as the United States or Germany), they are predominantly white. This is simply because the breeds of laying hens used are different.

5. France is the country with the most Nobel Prize in literature, with 15 laureates (followed by the United States with 11 laureates and the United Kingdom with 10 laureates).

6. In La Marseillaise, the expression "impure blood" does not refer to the enemies of France, but to revolutionaries, who defined themselves as "unclean" as opposed to the pure blood of the nobles. The stanza "That an impure blood water our furrows" means that the people are ready to shed their blood to defend their country.

7. Until 2012, there was only one "STOP" sign in all Paris. This sign was located at the exit of a building materials company, quay Saint-Exupéry in the XVIth arrondissement. Today, this panel has been removed.

8. In France, most sewer plates have the inscription "Pont-à-Mousson" or "PAM". This inscription refers to the town where these plaques are made, in the Saint-Gobain smelter.

9. Nowadays, there are still several kings in France. Indeed, Wallis and Futuna, overseas territory, has three kings (one in Wallis and two in Futuna). These monarchs are remunerated by the State and they have authority over their respective territories.

10. The French army is the only one in Europe to count pigeons in its ranks. Maintained at Mount Valerian near Paris, these pigeons can be used for transmissions in case of major disaster.

11. In terms of the number of inhabitants, France is by far the most nuclearized country in the world (58 reactors per 66 million inhabitants), followed by Japan (54 reactors per 127 million inhabitants) (104 reactors for 319 million people).

12. France is the first country to introduce a public transport system. In the 1660s, the "five-coach carriages" were a system of carriages moving at a fixed time on lines that linked different districts of Paris. The concept was developed by Blaise Pascal.

1. The oldest known tree in France is located in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, in the Alpes-Maritimes. It is an olive tree with a circumference of 20 meters, which would be about 2000 years old.

2. France still lives on the time zone of the Occupation. During the Second World War she was forced to align with Berlin time, and this change was never canceled. But before the war, France was on the same time zone as London.

3. In France, traders have no obligation to make change. Depending on the law, it is up to the customer to make up.

4. In 1940, France and the United Kingdom briefly planned to merge into one nation to face the German invasion. The project included a common citizenship and a single parliament.

5. France is by far the largest number of municipalities in Europe. There are nearly 36,000, or 40% of the European municipalities. In comparison, Germany has only 11,000 and Spain 8,000.

6. The most extensive commune in France is Maripasoula, in French Guiana, with an area of ​​more than 18,000km² (the equivalent of twice Corsica).

7. In France, trains run on the left except in Alsace-Moselle because the region was German at the time of the development of the railways.

8. With 11 million km², France has the second largest maritime area behind the United States. As certain requests from France have not yet been validated by the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, the maritime territory could still extend by 1 million km².

9. The Ardèche is the only French department that is not regularly served by SNCF passenger trains. There are only two stations served punctually when trains on the Lyon-Avignon line are diverted by the right bank of the Rhone.

10. In the course of history, several French departments have changed their name. This is particularly true of the Loire-Inférieure which became the Loire-Atlantique in 1957, the Basses-Pyrénées which became the Pyrénées-Atlantiques in 1969, or the Côtes-du-Nord which became the Côtes-du-Nord Armor in 1990. These changes were made to remove depreciating terms as "down" or "inferior".

11. France alone holds the world record for the number of roundabouts (~ roundabouts). There are 30,000, more than half of the roundabouts in the world.

12. The French commune with the shortest name is Y in the Somme. Its inhabitants are the Ypsilonians.

13. France is the most profitable country for McDonald's after the United States, with more than 1,000 restaurants spread throughout the country.

14. In France, there are six municipalities which have a mayor, even though they have no inhabitants. These villages were destroyed during the First World War, but their mayors are responsible for maintaining their maintenance.

15. Thanks to its overseas territories, it is with Brazil that France shares its longest frontier. Indeed, Guyana and Brazil have a common border of 730km in length.

16. In Alsace-Moselle, unlike the rest of France, December 26th is a public holiday. It is also the case of Good Friday for communes with a Protestant temple or a mixed church.

17. Alsace-Moselle is also the only French territory where religious education is compulsory because it was German at the time of the law on the separation of the Church and the State in 1905.

18. The most populous French department is the North.

19. And the least populous is the Lozere.

20. The oldest known building in France is the Barnenez cairn in Finistère, a 75-meter-long megalithic building dating from the 5th millennium BC

21. In France, there is a law that forbids calling his pig Napoleon.

22. In 2011, after a small concert, a piano stayed a few days at the Montparnasse station waiting to be repacked. Passers-by began to play with the idea that the instrument was in self-service, and faced with this unexpected success, the SNCF decided to place pianos in its stations.

23. Today, there are around 100 of them all over France.

24. In France, until 2012, it was theoretically illegal for a woman to wear trousers without prefectoral authorization.

25. In Alsace-Moselle, the inscription on the war memorials is not "Deaths for France" but "To our dead" or "The city of ... to its children", for during the First World War, the territory was still German.

26. In France, the guillotine was the mode of execution of those condemned to death until the abolition of the death penalty in 1981.

27. The densest metro system in the world is Paris, with 245 stations on 14 lines, with a surface area of ​​less than 90 km2.

28. The "gourmet meal of the French" is included in the intangible cultural heritage of humanity by Unesco.

29. France is the largest country in the European Union in area.

30. There are dozens of French communes with an unusual name. They include Chatte in Isère, Gland in the Yonne, Vulvoz in the Jura, Glaire in the Ardennes, Moisy in the Loir-et-Cher, Anus in the Yonne and Poil in the Nièvre.

31. There are several "versions" of the French flag. The flag with a bright blue and a light red is widespread, but there is a version with a bright red and a darker blue, which is generally sported by town halls and public buildings.

32. There is also a specific version for the Head of State's televised speeches, with a much narrower white part, so that the president's face is not surrounded by tight white.