🇫🇷 France
Oddlets from France.
A Little Patch of Yellow Wall
Marcel Proust wrote most of his novel in a cork-lined bedroom he fumigated five times a day with a hallucinogenic nightshade powder.
The Honeymoon
The man who signed a urinal and hung it in a gallery quit modern art for competitive chess, and then married an heiress who lasted seven months.
Egg Yolk, Rose Oil, Turpentine
One night in October 1537, a French army surgeon ran out of the boiling oil he was supposed to pour into gunshot wounds, and improvised a dressing of egg yolk, rose oil, and turpentine.
The Return to Life
In 1831, a jilted composer sketched a two-minute plan involving a lady's maid disguise, a pair of double-barrelled pistols, and two vials of poison in case the pistols failed.
The Divine Sarah's Menagerie
What do you feed an alligator you keep in a Paris apartment above a bedroom draped in black velvet?
The Man Who Chased His Own Equation
What do you do when the blackboard you've been chalking equations onto turns out to be a moving cab?
The Formosan
How did a blonde Frenchman convince 1700s London he was from Formosa?
The Wrapping
The man whose equations run every JPEG, MP3, and MRI scan came back from Egypt convinced heat was the secret to staying alive — and wore several overcoats indoors, in summer, until it killed him.
Monsieur Le Blanc
What do you do when you're convinced Napoleon's army is about to kill your pen pal mid-proof?
The Woman Who Drowned in the Desert
How does a woman who spent her whole life trying to vanish into the Sahara end up killed by it in the one way no one saw coming?
The Composer Found Under His Coat Stand
What does a man do for twenty-five years after walking offstage at the Paris Conservatoire in disgust?
Notre Grande Chasublerie
His ceilings were 1.65 metres high, which suited him perfectly. Every guest he ever received had to crouch.