A country of 30,689 km² gave the world the saxophone, bakelite, the roller skate and the Big Bang theory. The facts below cannot be guessed — only looked up.
Four Belgian inventions
- The saxophone: Adolphe Sax of Dinant patented it in 1846; his birthplace still stands and the town has sax-shaped benches along the Meuse
- Bakelite: Leo Baekeland developed the first fully synthetic plastic in 1907 — the start of the plastic age
- The Big Bang theory: Georges Lemaître, a priest and physicist from Leuven, formulated the expanding universe in 1927, two years before Hubble; Einstein initially called his mathematics abominable and later retracted
- The roller skate: Jean-Joseph Merlin, Huy, 1760
Records and oddities
- The motorway network is lit throughout the night and was for decades visible from space with the naked eye; astronauts used Belgium as a landmark
- Manneken Pis stands 61 cm tall and owns a wardrobe of over 1000 costumes, with its own museum and a dedicated dresser
- The Atomium of 1958 depicts an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times
- The rail network is the densest in Europe; the continent's first line ran in 1835 between Brussels and Mechelen
- There are over 3000 castle-type buildings, and per square kilometre the country holds the highest density of Michelin stars in the world
Language and politics as curiosity
Belgium has six parliaments and more ministers per head than any other European country. There is a municipality, Voeren, entirely surrounded by Dutch-speaking territory yet historically voting French-speaking, and an enclave situation at Baarle where the border runs through living rooms and cafés — with house numbers in two colours.
Names you would not link to Belgium
- Audrey Hepburn was born in Brussels in 1929
- Jean-Claude Van Damme comes from Sint-Agatha-Berchem
- Django Reinhardt was born in a caravan at Liberchies
- Eddy Merckx won five Tours, five Giros and held the yellow jersey for 445 days
- The Smurfs, Tintin and Lucky Luke all three come from this country
Obligations that surprise visitors
- Voting is compulsory and has been since 1893 — among the first such laws anywhere; staying away without valid reason risks a fine
- Carrying an identity card is a legal requirement from the age of fifteen, even for a short errand
- Compulsory schooling runs to eighteen, longer than in most neighbouring countries
- Since 2002 the country has had a legal framework for euthanasia, the second in the world after the Netherlands
- Household waste is paid for by the bag: municipal sacks cost money and other bags are not collected
Three more things
The country has three official languages but no national language, and the anthem exists in all three plus a mixed version sung at official occasions. The Belgian coast is only 67 km long, yet the world's longest tram line runs its entire length: the Kusttram, 68 km, since 1885. And chips are called French fries in English because American soldiers ate them in French-speaking Wallonia in 1917 and confused the language with the country.