10 Interesting Facts About France

ononiwumartina
Jul 13, 2016
4 min read

Every Summer, one of the preferred tourist destination for a lot of people is France. No doubt France is a beautiful country but there are some things that people do not know about France. Before I throw more lights on the 10 interesting facts about France, it would be good if I gave a little history of France.

A history of French facts and society

The official name of the Country France is the French Republic (République Française). It became a republic in 1792 as a result of the French Revolution against centuries of royal rule. The Revolution started with the storming of the Bastille fortress which took place on 14th July 1789, an event that is celebrated every year all over France known as Bastille Day.

Today, France still retains 15 territories overseas, including Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Réunion and Mayotte. Back on the mainland, Metropolitan France (including Corsica) is divided into 13 regions and sub-divided into 96 départements. The country’s colonial past is one reason why there are more than five million people of Arab and African descent living in France.

France has one of the largest economies in the Eurozone, after Germany. France is one of the largest exporters of luxury goods in the world, with the top four companies Cartier, Chanel, Hermes and Louis Vuitton alone worth billions. France's main exports include aircraft, food, chemicals, industrial machinery, iron and steel, electronics, motor vehicles and pharmaceuticals.

Around three quarters of France's 66.4 million population live in urban areas, and Paris, the capital, has some 2.2 million inhabitants alone, with metropolitan Paris home to around 12.4 million people, according to the national statistic office (INSEE). France has the second largest population in Europe after Germany, making up 13 percent of the European Union. France had Europe's highest birth rate in 2014 according to the OECD, with the average age for women giving birth at around 30 years.

Below are 10 interesting facts about France:

France is the world's most popular tourist destination – about 83.7 million visitors visited in France, according to the World Tourism Organisation report published in 2014, making it the world's most-visited country.
In France you can marry a dead person – yes like for real!!! under French law, in exceptional cases you can marry posthumously, as long as you can also prove that the deceased had the intention of marrying while alive and you receive permission from the French president
Liberté, égalitié, fraternité means ‘liberty, equality and fraternity and this is the national motto of France – it first appeared around the time of the Revolution (1789–1799), and was written into the constitutions of 1946 and 1958. Today you’ll see it on postage stamps, outside school buildings and government offices. The legal system in France is still largely based on the principles set down in Napoleon Bonaparte’s Code Civil after the revolution, in the 1800s.
The French Army was the first to use camouflage in 1915. Vehicles and even guns were painted by artists called camofleurs.
Louis XIX was the king of France for just 20 minutes, the shortest ever reign – he ascended to the French throne in July 1830 after his father Charles X abdicated, and abdicated himself 20 minutes later in favour of his nephew, the Duke of Bordeaux. He shares this record with Crown Prince Luís Filipe, who technically became king of Portugal after his father was assassinated but died from a wound just 20 minutes later.
France is the largest country in the EU, and it is also known as l'hexagone( 'the hexagon)' because of its six-sided shape. it has an area of 551,000 sq km.
France was the first country in the world to ban supermarkets from throwing away or destroying unsold food – since February 2016, shops must donate wastage to food banks or charities.
The world’s first artificial heart transplant and face transplant both took place in France – the heart transplant occurred in December 2013 at the Georges Pompidou Hospital in Paris. The bioprosthetic device, which mimics a real heart’s contractions, is powered by external lithium-ion battery, and is about three times the weight of a real organ. French surgeons were also the first to perform a face transplant in 2005
Paris Gare du Nord is Europe's busiest railway station with about 190 million passengers passing through each year. Inaugurated in 1846, it it also one of the world's oldest stations. France is also one of the world's first countries to utilise high-speed technology, introducing the TGV high-speed rail in 1981.
It is against the law to carry live snails on a high-speed train in France without their own tickets – in fact, any domestic animal under 5kg must be a paying passenger in France. In 2008, a Frenchman was fined for carrying snails on a TGV, although the fine was later waived.