X-Nico

10 unusual facts about Boulogne-sur-Mer


Alfred D'Orsay Tennyson Dickens

Alfred Dickens was educated at Brackenbury's Military School at Wimbledon and at Mr Gibson's boarding school in Boulogne-sur-Mer, with his brothers Henry and Sydney.

Aliaksei Abalmasau

As a junior he had won a K-4 500 m bronze medal at the 1998 Junior World Championships in Nyköping, Sweden but he first came to prominence in 2000 when he won three gold medals at the European under-23 championships at Boulogne, France (K-2 1000 m with Vadzim Makhneu, K-4 500 m, K-4 1000 m).

Ciments français

The company was created in 1850 by Émile Dupond and Charles Demarle in Boulogne-sur-Mer.

David Cal

The following year he became European C-1 500 m junior champion at Boulogne, France in 2000.

Declaration of Boulogne

The Declaration of Boulogne (Bulonja Deklaracio) was a document written by L. L. Zamenhof and endorsed by the attendees of the first world congress of Esperanto in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France in 1905.

Esperanto symbols

The flag was created by the Esperanto Club of Boulogne-sur-Mer, initially for their own use, but was adopted as the flag of the worldwide Esperanto movement by a decision of the first Universal Congress of Esperanto, which took place in 1905 in that town.

Guynemer of Boulogne

Guynemer or Guinemerz was a Boulognese pirate who played a role in the First Crusade.

Mary Joseph Butler

She made her religious profession 4 November 1657, at the English Benedictine convent at Boulogne, at the age of sixteen.

Naval gunfire support

Older ships were occasionally beached to provide a coastal defence platform, and during the Battle of France the British discovered effective anti-tank artillery in the form of the four-inch (102 mm) guns from destroyers tied up at the quays of Boulogne.

Raman Piatrushenka

Piatrushenka's first success on the international stage came at the 2000 European under-23 Championships in Boulogne, France as a member of the Belarus K-4 crew which won both the 500 m and 1000 m gold medals.


Adolf Friedrich von Reinhard

He won first prize from the Prussian Academy of Sciences for La Système de Mr. Pope sur la perfection du monde comparé à celui de Mr. Leibniz (1755), a critique of the philosophy of Alexander Pope, Leibniz and Christian Wolff.

Afonso III of Portugal

Pope Innocent IV then ordered Sancho II to be removed from the throne and be replaced by the Count of Boulogne.

André Marie Constant Duméril

Under the Restauration, he was elected a member of the Académie des Sciences (French Academy of Sciences) and succeeded, after 1803, Lacépède, who was occupied by his political offices, as professor of herpetology and ichthyology at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle.

Antenor Patiño

Doña María Isabel Patiño y Borbón (Paris, 3 June 1936 - Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris, 15 May 1954) who had a short and tragic marriage with Sir James Goldsmith, by whom she had an only daughter.

ASELSAN

After exportation of such a system to Oman in 2008 for the Qurayyat-Sur motorway, Aselsan won in 2010 a tender worth 5.4 million to develop an electronic toll collection system and implement at 51 toll booths in Poland.

Beurre d'Isigny

Beurre d'Isigny is a type of cow's milk butter made in the Veys Bay area and the valleys of the rivers running into it, comprising several French communes surrounding Isigny-sur-Mer and straddling the Manche and Calvados departments of northern France.

Blossoming Chestnut Branches

Blossoming Chestnut Branches was painted by Vincent van Gogh during the artist's Auvers-sur-Oise period in May 1890, the final year of his life.

Boulogne–Calais railway

The line opened on 7 January 1867 with railway stations at Wimille, Marquise, Caffiers and St Pierre.

Brico Dépôt

Brico Dépôt is a French chain of DIY and Home Improvement stores, headquartered in Longpont-sur-Orge.

Castillon-sur-Agen

Castillion-sur-Agen was a medieval castle in the commune of Bon-Encontre, near Agen in Aquitaine, France.

Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel

Having secured Longwy and Verdun without serious resistance, he turned back after a mere skirmish in Valmy, and evacuated France.

Château-sur-Epte Castle

The castle's role declined in the 16th century and it was ordered to be dismantled by Mazarin in 1647.

Edmund Crosby Quiggin

However, with the outbreak of the First World War, Quiggin found himself in war service from 1915 to 1919, first in Boulogne and then in the Admiralty's Intelligence Division.

Emilio Boggio

He returned to France in 1920 and soon thereafter died on 6 July 1920 at Auvers-sur-Oise in France.

Fabien Chéreau

Fabien Chéreau (born 17 September 1980 in Villefranche-sur-Saône, France) is a French Research Engineer and computer programmer best known for authoring the planetarium software Stellarium, a free, open source astronomy software package which renders 3D photo-realistic skies in real time.

Felix Pollaczek

Félix Pollaczek (1 December 1892 in Vienna – 29 April 1981 at Boulogne-Billancourt) was an Austrian-French engineer and mathematician, known for numerous contributions to number theory, mathematical analysis, mathematical physics and probability theory.

Gare d'Épinay-sur-Seine

The Gare d'Épinay-sur-Seine (Épinay-sur-Seine station) is one of the two railway stations in the commune of Épinay-sur-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis department, France (the other being the Gare d'Épinay-Villetaneuse).

Gare de Dijon-Porte-Neuve

Gare de Dijon-Porte-Neuve is located at kilometre post 321.935 on the "Dijon-Ville – Is-sur-Tille Line".

GDF Suez

With the stated aim of reaching a total production capacity of 10GW by 2013, three gas-fired thermal power plants at Fos-sur-Mer, Montoir-de-Bretagne and Saint-Brieuc are currently in various stages of development, as is a solar panel project in Curbans.

Georges Cipriani

In the late 1960s, he worked as a milling machine operator in the machine tool workshop of the Renault-Billancourt factory.

Gerard Lally

At Romans on the 18 April 1701 he married Anne-Marie, the daughter of Charles Jacques de Bressac, seigneur de La Vache; they had a son Thomas Arthur Lally.

Gérard Solvès

Gérard Solvès (born Lagny-sur-Marne, Paris, 7 April 1968) is a French tennis player, coach and director of the Tennis Club de Paris.

Gilles de Roye

He was afterwards professor of theology in Paris and abbot of the monastery of Royaumont at Asnières-sur-Oise, retiring about 1458 to the convent of Notre Dame des Dunes (Ten Duinen) at Koksijde, near Veurne, and devoting his time to study.

Henri de Boulainvilliers

In 1683 Boulainvilliers wrote " l'Idée d'un Système Géneral de la Nature" based on his reading of Jan Baptist van Helmont and Robert Boyle, followed by "Archidoxes de Paracelsus, avec une préface sur les principes de l'art chimique".

Jean Baptiste Pierre Constant, Count of Suzannet

Suzannet was severely wounded at the Battle of Rocheserviere on June 20, 1815 fighting for King Louis XVIII against troops loyal to Napoleon Bonaparte, as a result of his injuries Suzannet died the next day at Aigrefeuille-sur-Maine.

Jean de Pourtales

Jean de Pourtales (born August 19, 1965) is a French racing driver from Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Jean Louis Barthélemy O'Donnell

He fell from favour under the ultra-Royalist administration of the Jean-Baptiste, comte de Villèle, the Prime Minister of France from 1821–1828, and during which time largely he concentrated on local government, being Maire (Mayor) of Villiers-sur-Orge for seven years from 1820 to 1826, and was one of the founders of the l'Ecole d'enseignement mutuel (primary school) in Montlhéry, where using his own resources, he had several young pupils educated.

Jean-Louis Jaley

Jean-Louis Nicolas Jaley (born in Paris in 1802, died in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1866) was a French sculptor.

Jean-Pierre Gibrat

In 1985, on Saval's texts, Gibrat drew, in Télé Poche, l'Empire sous la mer, an adventure starring the canine character Zaza, created by Dany Saval and Michel Drucker.

Lise de Baissac

Borrell was the first to drop, with de Baissac following in quick succession, landing in the village of Boisrenard near the town of Mer.

Louis Poterat

His first great successes dated to the end of the 1930s, and were his adaptations of foreign-language songs into French (J'attendrai, to music by the Italian composer Dino Olivieri, in 1938, sung by Rina Ketty ; Sur les quais du vieux Paris, to music by the German composer Ralph Erwin, the first success of the singer Lucienne Delyle, in 1939).

Lucien Gagnon

He was among the first to take part in the agitation in Canada against the British government, was present at the assembly of the six confederate counties at St. Charles, 23 October 1837, and left the meeting convinced that insurrection was the only remedy for Canadian grievances.

Marcel Gromaire

Marcel Gromaire, whose father was an educator in Paris, was born in Noyelles-sur-Sambre, France.

Maria Domenica Mazzarello

The next morning, more out of a concern for worrying her already exhausted companions, she was able to get up, see the missionaries off, and then journey with her remaining Sisters to their house and orphanage in St. Cyr.

Metro San Joaquín

It is located in the Colonia Pencil Sur neighnorhood and nearby points of interest include the Panteón Francés.

Nogent-sur-Vernisson

The main employer in the town is the CIMRG plant which manufactures components for Renault cars and employs some 800 people.

NOV Fm

In 2001, a temporary radio station broadcast in the canton of Beauvoir-sur-Mer.

Paul Nougé

André Souris, Paul Nougé et ses complices in "Entretiens sur le surréalisme", under the direction of Ferdinand Alquié, Mouton, Paris-La Haye, 1968.

Plœuc-sur-Lié

The Count de La Rivière was the ancestor of Lafayette, who sold his estates at Ploeuc to cover the expenses which fell on him as a result of the American War of Independence.

Port of Deauville

The large town's position on the estuary of the River Touques was ideal for the establishment of a constructed harbour to supplement the fishing docks of Trouville-sur-Mer.

Prince Umberto of Savoy-Aosta

Umberto was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, the first child and son of Prince Aimone, Duke of Apulia and his wife, the former Princess Olga of Greece.

Puy d'Arras

Other puys under her patronage were founded at Amiens, Boulogne-sur-Mer, Caen, Évreux, and Rouen.

The Rock Pool

The novel is set in "Trou-sur-mer" (Hole on the Sea), which is said to based on Cagnes-sur-Mer between Cannes and Nice.

Tour du Crédit Lyonnais

In his song "Lyon Presqu'île" on the album The Superb, Benjamin Biolay (born in Villefranche-sur-Saone) includes "round in pen" in his view of the main monuments of the city.

Treasure of Pouan

The grave was accidentally uncovered in 1842 by a labourer at Pouan-les-Vallées (Aube), a French village in the canton of Arcis-sur-Aube on the south bank of the Aube River.

Treatise of the Three Impostors

According to historian Silvia Berti, the book was originally published as La Vie et L'Esprit de Spinosa (The Life and Spirit of Spinoza),containing both a biography of Benedict Spinoza and the anti-religious essay, and was later republished under the title Traité sur les trois imposteurs.

Ulane Bonnel

Following their marriage, Bonnel went to France with her husband, who had a distinguished career in the French Navy, rising to be chief of the maritime health service (chef du service santé des gens de mer) in 1969-72 and an internationally recognized biologist associated with the World Health Organization.

View of the Asylum and Chapel of Saint-Rémy

The painting was originally thought to be a view of the church at Labbeville, near Auvers, where he moved following his stay at the asylum, but it is now accepted to be a view of the asylum and church at Saint-Rémy.

Yves Duteil

He was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine), in 24 July 1949 and is the third child to be born in the family.