So, a new quiz show for celebrities started here in Denmark, it has a random topic each week.
This week it was Belgium, and quite naturally I couldn't resist taking notes:
- Same size as Jutland (which is even smaller than Denmark!)
- Flag is oddly small: 13:15
- Belgian Frank de Wein (or someone named pretty much like that), has spend 198 days, 17 hours and 34 minutes in space.
- In 1830 Leopold II founds Congo, known today as The Democratic Republic of Congo. Poor sod.
- The number of people named 'Leopold' in Denmark is currently 35.
- In 1958, as part of a World Fair Expo in Brussels, they erected the sculpture 'Atomiom', which is a 1:165.000.000.000 representation of the iron atom.
- Ten years later, René Magritte claimed that this is not a pipe, and quite cleverly so, if I might add.
- Karl Marx wrote his political manifesto in Brussels.
- The Saxophone was invented by the Belgian Adolphe Sax.
- Audrey Hepburn was born in Belgium.
- Hergé, creator of Tintin and Belgian (naturally), was a pioneer of the drawing style Ligne claire.
- Waterloo is in Belgium. (nah, no links, look it up if you're that thin on European military hisotry).
- Hercule Poirot, famous fictitious detective, was the first such to have an necrology in the New York Times.
No guarantees. No money back. Take it or leave it.
- Actually it WAS leopold II who claimed and founded Congo, but NOT in 1830 - 1830 is when Belgium itself was founded as a country, as a buffer between Germany and France in the first place (theyve never liked each other much) and between the Protestant Netherlands and the Catholic 'south' (France, Spain, Italy etc), under Leopold I. Leopold II had Congo assigned to him personally in 1884, and relinquished it to the Belgian state in 1908.
- it's the Atomium
everything else seems correct. on a sidenote :
- obviously Waterloo is in Belgium. If ever there was a place in Europe where all kinds of countries liked to go fight their wars, it was where now Belgium is. Furthermore, Flanders has always been the most industrious and subsequently richest area of Europe, and so every selfrespecting country with a history of conquest has occupied it at some point in history (the Roman Empire, Spain, France, Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, Burgundy, etc.). Why do you think the Flemish are so good at languages eh? (and at evading taxes, duh)
__________________ It is preferable to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
Yup. Put the 12.7 billion transfers per year from flanders to wallonia next to that, which have been going on since ww2 (so 67 years), and flanders actually wouldve been the only debt-free region in europe. But yeah, the country is belgium, not flanders, so globally it's correct what you say ... its just so that one of the richest areas in europe is paying for upkeeping the living standards of one of the poorest areas in europe, and this within the same country.
__________________ It is preferable to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.
In my opinion national debt is quite poor measure. Besides few outcast countries which cant get a loan and few more countries which are clever enough to keep they balance positive rest of the world is in debt, so what does it mean Belgium is in debt now a day?
