X-Nico

98 unusual facts about Pyrenees


1984 Pau Grand Prix

This race was held around the streets of the city of Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, south-western France, on 11 June.

1986 Pau Grand Prix

This race was held around the streets of the city of Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, south-western France, on 19 May.

2008 Getxo bombing

Aitor Artetxe was another cell member on the run until he was arrested in the French town of Gerde, Hautes-Pyrénées on December 8, 2008.

2013 Open Saint-Gaudens Midi-Pyrénées

It was the tenth edition of the tournament which was part of the 2013 ITF Women's Circuit, offering a total of $50,000 in prize money.

2017 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships

The event is scheduled to take place from September 13 to 17, 2017 in Pau, France under the auspices of International Canoe Federation (ICF).

Abydos

Abidos, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, a commune of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département, in southwestern France

Adolfo Ruspoli, 2nd Duke of Alcudia

Don Camilo Ignacio (Camillo Ignacio) Ruspoli y Álvarez de Toledo, de Godoy (di Bassano) y Silva-Bazán, dei Principi Ruspoli (Pau, January 31, 1865 – Madrid, April 15, 1930), married dona María del Pilar Navacerrada y ..., ... y ...

Adolphe Thiers

In each of the years immediately following his arrival in Paris he collected and published a volume of his articles, the first on the salon of 1822, the second on a tour in the Pyrenees.

Africa Eco Race

2012 - The fourth edition took his departure on December 27, 2011 in Saint-Cyprien with arrival in Dakar at January 8, 2012.

2014 - The sixth edition took his departure December 29, 2013 in Saint-Cyprien to arrive on the shores of Lac Rose in Dakar on January 11, 2014 .

Agnotherium

The first specimen was located in strata zone MN 4 in Alsace, France Other locations were: En Pejouan, Midi-Pyrenees Region; Pontigne.

Ance

Ance, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, a commune in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in Aquitaine in southwestern France.

Andorra, Philadelphia

says that the neighborhood (which occupies one of the higher elevations in Philadelphia, on bluffs overlooking the Schuylkill River) was named "Andorra" after a fancied resemblance to the small country of the same name which sits astride the Pyrenees between France and Spain.

Antin, Hautes-Pyrénées

The former Barony then Marquisate, was elevated to a duchy by Louis XIV (former lover of Mme de Montespan) in 1711 for Louis Antoine de Pardaillan de Gondrin and was passed down his family till its extinction in 1757 at the death of Louis Antoine's great grandson Louis de Pardaillan de Gondrin (1727–1757) who died in Breme during the Seven Years' War.

Aquitanian language

This strong formal element can be traced at either side of the mountain range as far west as an imaginary line roughly stretching from Pamplona to Bayonne (compare Bardos/Bardoze, Ossès/Ortzaize, Briscous/Beskoitze), where it ceases to appear.

Army of the Pyrenees

At the outbreak of the War of the Pyrenees with the Kingdom of Spain, a decree of 30 April 1793 separated the Armée des Pyrénées into the Army of the eastern Pyrenees (Armée des Pyrénées orientales) and the Army of the western Pyrenees (Armée des Pyrénées occidentales).

One of the French Revolutionary armies, the Army of the Pyrenees (Armée des Pyrénées) was created by a decree of the National Convention dated 1 October 1792 and formed out of the right wing of the Armée du Midi.

Arthur Lee Dixon

Catherine found the atmosphere in Oxford difficult for her health, and spent a lot of time in Pau to recover.

Banca

Banca, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, a commune of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département, France

Barhoue

the mande of Barhoue, in the north of Saint-Palais, by analogy with the former, the original name being *Barrhurte (Barhourt, 1316).

Basque pelota at the 2011 Pan American Games

The top five nations in each event (top ten for the Paleta Leather Pairs 30m Fronton) at the 2010 World Championships in Pau, France qualified for the Pan American Games.

Bombus monticola

Bombus monticola is found in most mountainous areas of Europe, as northern Scandinavia (mostly Norway and northern Sweden; the distribution in Finland is rather patchy, and confined to the area along the Norwegian border), the Alps, the Cantabrian Mountains, the Pyrenees, the Apennines and in the Balkans.

Charles Hardwick

In 1859 he became archdeacon of Ely, and commenced B.D. On 18 August of that year he was killed by falling over a precipice in the Pyrenees.

Christina Oiticica

The artist began this technique painting in the forests, valleys and mountains of the Pyrenees, in France.

Christopher Bunting

He was awarded a scholarship to study for the best part of a year with the great Pablo Casals in Prades.

Common bream

The common bream's home range is Europe north of the Alps and Pyrenees, as well as the Balkans.

Constructions Aéronautiques du Béarn

Constructions Aéronautiques du Béarn or CAB was a French aircraft manufacturer established by Max Laporte and Yves Gardan in Pau in 1948.

Double R Racing

In just their second season, Räikkönen Robertson were champions, winning a massive fourteen races from the twenty-two that took place, and Championship Class wins for fifteen (Conway came behind the Invitation Class Signature-Plus cars at Pau, while Watts was, of course, in the same category).

Duncan McNeill, 1st Baron Colonsay

Lord Colonsay died at Pau, France, on 31 January 1874, aged 80, when the title became extinct.

Emiliano Mutti

During his career Emiliano has mainly worked on stratigraphy and sedimentology of turbidite basins in fold-thrust belts, notably in the Spanish Pyrenees, the northern Apennines, and Greece.

Erwin Kramer

In 1939 he was interned in a French camp at Saint-Cyprien, Pyrénées-Orientales and returned to the Soviet Union, where he worked for the German desk of Radio Moscow.

Exilles

Pliny the Elder also (ii. 108) makes Italy extend to the Alps at Scincgmagus, and then he gives the breadth of Gallia from Scingomagus to the Pyrenees and Illiberis.

Felipe Poey

He spent several years (1804 to 1807) of his life in Pau then studied law in Madrid.

Felix Nussbaum

After Nazi Germany attacked Belgium in 1940, Nussbaum was arrested by Belgian police as a "hostile alien" German, and was subsequently taken to the Saint-Cyprien camp in France.

Fernando Latapi

His grandfather was born in Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques in the south of France, and his mother’s family came form Tlacotalpan, Veracruz.

FIS Nordic World Ski Championships 1941

At the 1946 meeting in Pau, France, the FIS declared this a non-event because of the limited number of competitors.

Florent Brard

In 2006 they moved to Serres-Castet, near the Pyrenees, to profit from better weather for training than in the Loire valley around Tours and to improve his riding in the mountains.

George Harris, 3rd Baron Harris

Harris was beset will ill-health and remained bed-ridden for some time in the city of Pau in France where he worked for a time for the Church of England.

George Rodocanachi

He hid them in his house and arranged false identity papers until they could be helped to escape either across the Pyrenees or to a Royal Navy submarine.

Gerde

Gerde, Hautes-Pyrénées, commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department, France

Guiche

Guiche, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, a commune in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department in south-western France.

Guillaume Giscard d'Estaing

After an initial career as a naval officer and helicopter pilot, Guillaume Giscard d'Estaing entered Turbomeca (Snecma group) based in Pau in 1994 as Sales Manager and, later, Marketing Director.

Hautes-Pyrénées

The Western Pyrenees National Park covers a significant area, and includes well-known attractions such as the Cirque de Gavarnie and the Pont d'Espagne.

Ignatius Hieronymus Berry

The second son of Alexandre Ignatius Appollinaire Berry, a winemaker from Pau, France, and María Charlotte Denise Vourvachis-Grajales, a school teacher of Greek and Mexican ancestry.

Jacques Marinelli

Marinelli rode above himself and exploited the rivalry between Coppi and Bartali to keep the lead for another five days, as far as the Pyrenees.

Jagdgeschwader 101

Formed at Werneuchen from Jagdfliegerschule 1, JG 101 was created in December 1942 and were stationed from 27 January 1943 at Pau, southern France.

Jane Welch

After school she worked as a bookseller before going for five years to Soldeu, Andorra in the Pyrenees as a ski teacher.

Jean Lassalle

On 3 June 2003 Lassalle stood up in the National Assembly during questions to Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy and sang the Occitan anthem Se Canto in protest at an announcement by Sarkozy concerning the housing of 23 gendarmes tasked with guarding the Somport tunnel, which links France with Spain through the Pyrenees.

Jean-Pierre Serre

Born in Bages, Pyrénées-Orientales, France, to pharmacist parents, Serre was educated at the Lycée de Nîmes and then from 1945 to 1948 at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris.

Jedediah Vincent Huntington

The last few years of his life were spent at Pau, in the south of France, where he died of pulmonary tuberculosis in his forty-eighth year.

Jenny Dufau

Dufau returned to Europe following the end of World War I and died on 29 August 1924 in Pau, France.

Joe Lloyd

He was the first golf professional in France, being hired in 1883 at the Pau Golf Club in Pau, France, by Englishmen spending their winters there.

Julio Ducuron

He is of French descent' his parents, Julio Loreto Ducuron and Elsa Lebrone descended from the French Basques of Madiran in the High Pyrenees Mountains.

Labatut

Labatut, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, a commune in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department

Lahontan

Lahontan, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, a commune in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques département of France

Leucaspius delineatus

The southern limits of its range are essentially marked by the Pyrenees and the Alpide belt.

Mansan

Mansan, Hautes-Pyrénées, a commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées department in France

Marcel Bidot

His freewheel broke in the Pyrenees and he could no longer turn the wheel - in the absence of a derailleur, which Desgrange had also banned - to ride a lower gear.

Mariam Baouardy

At that point, Mother Veronica had just received permission to transfer to the Discalced Carmelite monastery at Pau to prepare for her forming a new congregation of Religious Sisters serving in India, the Sisters of the Apostolic Carmel.

Marta Casals Istomin

In 1952, her uncle Rafael took the 15-year-old to the Prades Music Festival.

Martial Singher

Martial Singher (August 14, 1904 - March 9, 1990) was a French baritone opera singer born in Oloron-Sainte-Marie, Pyrénées-Atlantiques.

Méryl Marchetti

Since 1999, Méryl Marchetti founds in Pau the group “La Travarde” where he criticizes the form collection and invents other modes of organization of the corpora of poems such as the play-of-tanks, circles polypoetic (or game piece).

Miriam Coles Harris

After the death of her husband in 1892, she spent most of her time in Europe, dying in Pau, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France in 1925.

Monbar Hotel attack

The trial of Pierre Frugoli and Lucien Mattei opened on 30 November 1987 in Pau, France.

Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe

Dunford suggests he was probably from the Pau area in southernmost France and a Protestant, that his first name was "Jean" and that he had two daughters named Brigide and Françoise.

Montgreenan

Mrs. Rachel Glasgow was an artist and an author with great literary taste and she died at Pau, in the Pyrenees, on 19 July 1828.

Nicolas de la Grotte

Nothing is known about his early life; the first record of La Grotte's life is from 1557, when he was employed as a keyboard player (organ and spinet) to the King of Navarre, Antoine de Bourbon, at Pau in southwestern France.

Nicole Peyrafitte

Nicole Peyrafitte (born June 18, 1960) is a Pyrenean-born performance artist who considers herself a "Gascorican" (an American from Gascony).

She was born in Luchon (French Pyrenees) into the 5th generation of a family of restaurateurs and received her early cooking training from her grandfather Joseph Peyrafitte, a renowned chef.

Norath

About 1000 BC, it seems that the Celts, coming from the east, crossed the Rhine and settled the lands between that river on the one side and the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees on the other.

Oskar Bider

On November 8 of that year he joined Blériot's aviation school in Pau, situated in the northern Pyrenees.

Patrick Delcroix

Patrick Delcroix, born February 8, 1963, in Pau/France, dancer and choreographer, was educated at the Centre International de Danse Rosella Hightower in Cannes and the Ecole de danse Colette Soriano in Orthez, France.

Philippe Labro

Philippe Labro, is a French author, journalist and film director, born in Montauban (close to the Massif Central and the Pyrenees) on 27 August 1936.

Pierre de Marca

Pierre de Marca (January 24, 1594 – June 29, 1662) was a French bishop and historian, born at Gan in Béarn of a family distinguished in the magistracy.

Pirenópolis

Because of some similarity with their native Pyrenees of Europe, a mountain chain situated between Spain and France, they had then given this mountain range the Latin name of Pireneus.

Potentilla alchemilloides

Potentilla alchemilloides, the Alchemilla-leaved Cinquefoil, is a species of cinquefoil (genus Potentilla) native to the Pyrenees.

Pyrénées-Orientales

Pyrénées-Orientales consists of three river valleys in the Pyrenees mountain range –from north to south, those of the Agly, Têt and Tech– and the eastern Plain of Roussillon into which they converge.

Pyrénées-Orientales corresponds almost exactly to the pre-Revolutionary province of Roussillon, but it also includes Fenolheda, a small piece of territory which had formerly been on the southern edge of Languedoc.

Prades (Catalan Prada de Conflent) - site of the Catalan Summer University (Universitat Catalana d'Estiu).

Rancho El Escorpión

Miguel Leonis (1824–1889) was born in Basque Cambo-les-Bains-in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, a traditional French département in the southwest of France.

Rheine-Bentlage Air Base

Since then helicopters from Rheine saw action in as different places as Italy, Greece and the Pyrenees mainly by offering help and logistic support after natural disasters.

Richard Spruce

This early interest in botany led to his being sent on a collecting trip in the Pyrenees in 1845-6.

Robert E. Smith

In the dead of winter, he crossed the Pyrenees, only to be captured and tortured in a Spanish prison before being released.

Roman Catholic Diocese of Bayonne

Until 1566, the Diocese of Bayonne included much Spanish territory, i.e. the four Archpresbyteries of Baztan, Lerin, Bortziria in Navarre, and Hondarribia in Guipuzcoa, a remnant of Charlemagne's conquests beyond the Pyrenees.

Saint Bavo Cathedral

The painting was stored in a museum in Pau for the duration of the war, as French, Belgian and German military representatives signed an agreement which required the consent of all three before the masterpiece could be moved.

Saint-Savin, Hautes-Pyrénées

In the ancient past, Hercules visited the area, and fell in love with a beautiful girl named Pyrene, who happened to be a daughter of the King of Cerdagne.

Salix lapponum

Salix lapponum, the downy willow, is a low, much branched shrub (to 1.5 metres) having a wide distribution in Northern Europe, eastwards to the Altai and western Siberia, and is found as far south as the Pyrenees and Bulgaria.

São Paulo Railway

Fox was at that time only 26 years old but had experience in the construction of railways through the mountains of northern Wales and the hillsides of the Pyrenees.

SeisQuaRe

Seisquare has worked over different countries from offices in Paris, Pau, Stavanger and Rio.


2007 : SeisQuaRe Pau is opened in order to focus on the SeisQuaRe spatial analysis capabilities for dense velocities and amplitude cubes.

Sorbus chamaemespilus

Sorbus chamaemespilus (False Medlar or Dwarf Whitebeam) is a species of Sorbus native to the mountains of central and southern Europe, from the Pyrenees east through the Alps to the Carpathians and the Balkans, growing at altitudes of up to 2500 m.

Sorbus mougeotii

Sorbus mougeotii (Vosges Whitebeam or Mougeot's Whitebeam) is a species of whitebeam native to the mountains of central and western Europe from the Pyrenees east through the Alps to Austria, and north to the Vosges Mountains.

Soues

Soues, Hautes-Pyrénées, a town and commune in the Hautes-Pyrénées département of south-western France

Stellar magnetic field

The first instrument to be dedicated to the study of stellar magnetic fields was NARVAL, which was mounted on the Bernard Lyot Telescope at the Pic du Midi de Bigorre in the French Pyrenees mountains.

Volodymir Gustov

After being selected for the 2008 Tour de France team, he worked for the two Schleck brothers and Carlos Sastre as the race got into the French Alps and Pyrenees.

Volucella inflata

This fly is very local over much of Europe, being found from Sweden and northern Germany, the Pyrenees and northern Spain, Britain, eastwards through Central Europe into European Russia and the Caucasus, and the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.

Ward McAllister

He used the earnings from his legal prowess to journey throughout Europe's great cities and spas—Bath, Pau, Bad Nauheim, and the like-—where he observed the mannerisms of the titled nobility.

William Craven, 5th Earl of Craven

He died on 15 September 1932 of peritonitis at Pau, France, at the age of 35, and was succeeded by his son, William Robert Bradley Craven, 6th Earl of Craven.


Arros

Larceveau-Arros-Cibits, a commune of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department

Axlor

Axlor has a sequence of Middle Paleolithic levels, representing the later stages of the Mousterian in the Pyrenees region.

Bram van der Stok

After arriving safely there he was equipped with the paperwork of a Belgian persona, and then traveled by train via Brussels and Paris to Toulouse, where the French Resistance put him with two American lieutenants, two other RAF pilots, a French officer and a Russian, and took the group across the Pyrenees to Lleida in Spain.

Camon

Camon, Ariège, a commune in the Midi-Pyrénées region of southern France

Charles Packe

Packe discovered several plant species that are endemic to the Pyrenees and also carried out a number of experiments when attempting to acclimatize rare plants in his garden.

Chistorra

In the Aragonese Pyrenees there are two different sorts of txistorra; one of them made only of pork meat and another made of lungs, boned pig head and the pancreas, called berika.

Draba aizoides

Draba aizoides has a wide distribution in the mountains of southern and central Europe, from the Pyrenees in the west, through the Alps to the Carpathians.

Dyer baronets

The ninth Baronet was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army and served in the Peninsular War, where he was present at Badajoz, Vitoria, San Sebastian, the Pyrenees, Nive, Orthez and Toulouse.

Entre Nous

In the preliminary scenes, set in 1942, Lena (Isabelle Huppert), a pretty 18 year old, has been arrested and brought to an internment camp for Jews in the Pyrenees.

Éric Caritoux

Caritoux rode himself into form and won the race's first mountain stage which finished on top of the Rassos de Peguera in the Pyrenees, he then rode admirably on stage 12 which finished at the Lagos de Covadonga summit and took over the leaders yellow jersey from Pedro Delgado.

Escaladieu Abbey

Escaladieu Abbey (French: l'Abbaye de l'Escaladieu) was a Cistercian abbey located in the French commune of Bonnemazon in the Hautes-Pyrénées.

General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales

The General Council of the Pyrénées-Orientales (in French: Conseil Général des Pyrénées-Orientales) is the assembly elected for 6 years by the 31 Cantons of the Pyrénées-Orientales and its executive.

Gert Heinrich Wollheim

He was arrested in 1939 and held in a series of labor camps in France (Vierzon, Ruchard, Gurs and Septfonds) until his escape in 1942, after which he and his wife hid in the Pyrénées with the help of a peasant woman.

Henry John Clements

# Catharine, born 3 February 1822 at Ashford Lodge, died 18 September 1830 at Bagnères-de-Bigorre, Hautes-Pyrénées, France.

Jacques de la Palice

La Palice was sent again to the Pyrenees, and then to the successful attempt to rescue Marseille from Duke of Bourbon's siege.

Madani Bouhouche

He moved to the French Pyrenees, living isolated in the small city of Fougax-et-Barrineuf, being responsible for a rental accommodation of an old friend, Alain Weykamp.

Octave Lapize

The following year he went head-to-head with Alcyon teammate Faber who led comfortably until colliding with a dog at the foot of the Pyrenees.

Saint-Juéry XIII

Saint-Juéry XIII, nicknamed the Scorpions, are a French Rugby League club based in Saint-Juéry, Tarn in the Midi-Pyrénées region.

Salix herbacea

herbacea is adapted to survive in harsh environments, and has a wide distribution on both sides of the North Atlantic, in arctic northwest Asia, northern Europe, Greenland, and eastern Canada, and further south on high mountains, south to the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Rila in Europe, and the northern Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States.

Second Punic War

Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus established his headquarters at Cissa, in the midst of Hannibal's latest acquisition, the area between Ebro and Pyrenees.

Tarbes Cathedral

Tarbes Cathedral (Cathédrale Notre-Dame-de-la-Sède de Tarbes) is a Roman Catholic cathedral, and a national monument of France located in the town of Tarbes, Hautes-Pyrénées.

Tirso de Molina

That his reputation extended beyond the Pyrenees in his own lifetime may be gathered from the fact that James Shirley's Opportunity is derived from El Castigo del penséque; but he was neglected in Spain itself during the long period of Calderón's supremacy, and his name was almost forgotten till the end of the 18th century, when some of his pieces were timidly recast by Dionisio Solis and later by Juan Carretero.

Vía de la Plata

After its establishment, the Via Delapidata crossed Hispania from Cádiz, through the Pyrenees, towards Gallia Narbonensis (southern France) and Rome in the Italian Peninsula.

VPC Andorra XV

Despite some early hard beginning, VPC Andorra XV has been rising steadily and currently live sporting level, a period which is fairly positive having won two promotions and two Honneur Midi-Pyrénées Championship finals, competing in Fédérale 3.