{"id":15492,"date":"2014-08-31T21:43:57","date_gmt":"2014-08-31T20:43:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=15492"},"modified":"2014-08-31T21:43:57","modified_gmt":"2014-08-31T20:43:57","slug":"can-you-name-10-famous-belgians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=15492","title":{"rendered":"Can you name 10 famous Belgians?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Vee \u00a0and I are spending a few days this week on a short break in Antwerp in the northern (Flemish) part of Belgium. Our guide book offers the following 10 famous Belgians:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Gerard Mercator \u00a0(1512-1594) &#8211; the inventor of the Mercator projection to represent the spherical globe on a flat page.<\/li>\n<li>Georges Simeon (1903-1989)- the writer of 400 novels including 75 featuring Inspector Maigret.<\/li>\n<li>Queen Astrid (1905-1935) &#8211; the Swedish princess (does that count?) who married Prince Leopold of Belgium in 1934.<\/li>\n<li>Georges Remi (1907-1983) &#8211; the creator of Tintin using the pen name Herge.<\/li>\n<li>Jacques Brel (1929-1978) &#8211; a singer-songwriter who made his name in France (does that count?).<\/li>\n<li>Johnny Hallyday &#8211; the godfather of French rock and roll whose father was Belgian (does that count?).<\/li>\n<li>Eddie Merckx &#8211; five times winner of the Tour de France.<\/li>\n<li>Jean-Claude Van Damme &#8211; star of action movies.<\/li>\n<li>Justine Henin-Hardenne &#8211; a tennis champion.<\/li>\n<li>Kim Clijsters &#8211; another tennis champion, now retired.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>So, be honest, how many did you know were famous Belgians?<\/p>\n<p>Of course, depending on your definition of &#8216;famous&#8217;, it&#8217;s amazing how many famous Belgians can be identified. You can find a list of 263 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.famousbelgians.net\/alphabetical.htm\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vee \u00a0and I are spending a few days this week on a short break in Antwerp in the northern (Flemish) part of Belgium. Our guide book offers the following 10 famous Belgians: Gerard Mercator \u00a0(1512-1594) &#8211; the inventor of the Mercator projection to represent the spherical globe on a flat page. Georges Simeon (1903-1989)- the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15492"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15495,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15492\/revisions\/15495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}