Stan and Vas on holiday Part 4
From Stan's lightly fictionalised journal
Saturday 12 August
I've been to the Belgian National Records Office and it's official: There are only 9 famous Belgians! They are:
Adolphe Sax - inventor of the saxophone (also the saxhorn and saxtromba)
Lambert Adolphe Quetelet - Mathematician and inventor of the Body Mass Index
Gerardus Mercator - Cartographer, mathematician and geographer (hence Mercator projection)
Jean-Marc Bosman - Footballer who caused the transfer rules to change
Eddy Merckx - Legendary cyclist
Rene Magritte - Surrealist painter and theorist
Georges Remi aka Hergé - Creator of Tintin
Jean-Claude Van Damme - The Muscles from Brussels
Audrey Hepburn - Who, I hope, requires no introduction
One reason for the lack of famous people is the relative youth of the country, which was only founded in 1830. Hence the introduction of earlier "Flemish" personalities, and the slightly questionable inclusion of Audrey Hepburn, born in Brussels (as Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston) to a British father and a Dutch mother.
The Belgians themselves see this situation as a challenge rather than a problem and have a plan in hand to upgrade Johann Tserclaes Tilly from "well known general" to "famous general" by 2015; to rebrand an existing famous historic figure as Belgian by 2017; and to create a brand-new modern celebrity by 2020!
[With apologies for Stan's grotesque ignorance of famous Belgians, who are currently enumerated by one website to the figure of 259]
Saturday 12 August
I've been to the Belgian National Records Office and it's official: There are only 9 famous Belgians! They are:
Adolphe Sax - inventor of the saxophone (also the saxhorn and saxtromba)
Lambert Adolphe Quetelet - Mathematician and inventor of the Body Mass Index
Gerardus Mercator - Cartographer, mathematician and geographer (hence Mercator projection)
Jean-Marc Bosman - Footballer who caused the transfer rules to change
Eddy Merckx - Legendary cyclist
Rene Magritte - Surrealist painter and theorist
Georges Remi aka Hergé - Creator of Tintin
Jean-Claude Van Damme - The Muscles from Brussels
Audrey Hepburn - Who, I hope, requires no introduction
One reason for the lack of famous people is the relative youth of the country, which was only founded in 1830. Hence the introduction of earlier "Flemish" personalities, and the slightly questionable inclusion of Audrey Hepburn, born in Brussels (as Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston) to a British father and a Dutch mother.
The Belgians themselves see this situation as a challenge rather than a problem and have a plan in hand to upgrade Johann Tserclaes Tilly from "well known general" to "famous general" by 2015; to rebrand an existing famous historic figure as Belgian by 2017; and to create a brand-new modern celebrity by 2020!
[With apologies for Stan's grotesque ignorance of famous Belgians, who are currently enumerated by one website to the figure of 259]
Comments
There was also the inventor of Bakalite but I haven't had the chance to google that yet.
Kekulé appears to have been at Ghent University 1858-1865, and came up with the cyclical structure of Benzene in 1865 but that doesn't make him a Belgian. Especially considering the debate over whether he, Couper or Loschmidt actaully came up with it, which continues elsewhere on the internet.