If I were going to draw up a list of the top ten hoaxes of 2006 (which I'm not because I don't have enough time), the Great Belgian Breakup Hoax would definitely have to be included in the list, sneaking in right before the end of the year. As has been widely reported, on Wednesday many people were briefly led to believe that Belgium had ceased to exist.
An AP story summarized what happened:
Suddenly and shockingly, Belgium came to an end. State television broke into regular programming late Wednesday with an urgent bulletin: The Dutch-speaking half of the country had declared independence and the king and queen had fled. Grainy pictures from the military airport showed dark silhouettes of a royal entourage boarding a plane. Only after a half hour did the station flash the message: "This is fiction."
The Belgian TV station apparently perpetrated the hoax in order to stir up debate about the future of the country. Since the news was being reported straight-faced by a reputable news source,
many viewers believed it.
Oddly, this is not the first time we've seen a hoax like this. Back in 1992 the London Times reported essentially the same news, as a joke, on April Fool's Day.
It made #90 on my list of the Top 100 April Fools Hoaxes of all time:
The London Times reported in 1992 that formal negotiations were underway to divide Belgium in half. The Dutch-speaking north would join the Netherlands and the French-speaking south would join France. An editorial in the paper then lamented that, "The fun will go from that favorite parlor game: Name five famous Belgians." The report apparently fooled the British foreign office minister Tristan Garel-Jones who almost went on a TV interview prepared to discuss this "important" story. The Belgian embassy also received numerous calls from journalists and expatriate Belgians seeking to confirm the news. A rival paper later criticized the prank, declaring that, "The Times's effort could only be defined as funny if you find the very notion of Belgium hilarious."
Actually, when put that way, there does seem to be something amusing about the notion of Belgium. Though I don't know exactly why this is.
Nevertheless, amusing as Belgium might be, it seems safe to say that it still does exist. So I won't be needing to add it to my list of
nonexistent places.
Comments
I take it you've never been to Belgium, then, or you'd know why.
Anyhow, Belgians are perpetually talking about splitting their country (even more than Texans talk about seceding from the U.S.).
There seem to be major cultural and political divisions (at least, the Belgians see them as big) between the Flemish (Dutch-speaking Belgians) and the Walloons (French-speaking Belgians). To aggravate matters, the Flems are mostly Protestant and the Walloons are mostly Catholic.
So the idea is far from new, but claiming that it actually happened is a fairly audacious prank.
The confusion probably arises from the fact that a majority of Dutch people are Protestant.
There are hardly any Protestants in Belgium at all. It is a very tiny minority, certainly far tinier than the Muslim population.
Wikipedia says this:
"Roman Catholic: 75%; Protestant, Muslim, agnostic, atheist or other: 25%."
So, depending on how much of the "other" they make up, Protestants would be anywhere from 0% to 24% or so of the population. Much less than in nearby countries like Germany, Netherlands, or Great Britain.
I did meet some Protestants when I was in Belgium. I guess I was just lucky.
Wikepia has this to say: "Roman Catholicism is Belgium's majority religion, but by 2004 weekly Sunday church attendance has dropped to about 4 to 8% depending on the source. Other religions widely practiced in Belgium are Islam (3.5%), Protestantism and Judaism (both less than 1%)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Belgium
By the way, I think it's striking that the Wikipedia author decribes as "widely practiced" two religious traditions that the same article says are followed by "less than 1%" of the population. What would Wikipedia call a tiny minority?
Jean Claude van Damme is Belgian.
They famous enough for you?
Hardly anyone has heard of TinTin, unfortunately. And nobody should have heard of van Damme.
You forgot the Singing Nun. 😉
There's one famous person for you.
Was Audry Hepburn from Belgum? Or of Belgian descent? I've seen a few of her movies and enjoyed them, mostly. However, I know little about her. I rarely pay attention to celebraties.
That's news to me.
Then there was ... uh ... Jacques Brel. Or was he French? Darn it, now I can't remember.
Her mother took her and her siblings to the Netherlands to ride out the war, thinking they would be safer there, though of course they weren't.
Do to her figure (5'7" and malnourished from the war) she gave up on dancing as a career and started acting (also, because it paid more), starting in British films and quickly moving on to Hollywood.
When it comes to naming famous Belgians, I always find it striking that everyone seems to forget that some of history's most famous painters were Belgians: Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, the Van Eyck brothers, Bouts, father and son Brueghel, Jordaens, Magritte, Delvaux, Ensor, Memling, and many more.
(to be continued)
Belgium is also famous for the comic book industry: the Smurfs, Lucky Luke, Largo Winch, XIII, Tintin, ... were all created by Belgians, although maybe only Tintin can be considered 'Belgian' in this list).
World-class choreographers Anne-Theresa De Keersmaker and Wim Vandekeybus are Belgians.
There's also Michel Daerden, the politician who got his 15 minutes of youtube-fame when he appeared quite drunk on tv, filled with joy over winning the elections.
Belgian Adolphe Sax invented... the Saxophone.
The list goes on and on. But of course, Belgium IS a very small country, and in comparison with countries like the US, the UK or France, our heritage will seem small. Especially if you're from one of those bigger countries and couldn't care less about the rest of the world.
Hey, who says there aren't many famous Belgians?
"He had a massive hit in 1977 with "Ca Plane Pour Moi" and probably remains one of the most famous Belgians to this date even though he has now disappeared into obscurity."
Hmmm, maybe TinTin was a better poster boy.
This is one of the rare times that I've heard of the UK being called 'one of those bigger countries'. Especially with it being four of them, and all...
😉
LOL - I know, to us Belgians almost any other country in the world is 'one of those bigger countries' 😉
It seems there's already something new to make fun over here in Belgium. Two months ago, a new national airline carrier was introduced, Brussels Airlines, a merger from SNBA with Virgin Express. They showed their new logo on some airplanes, new costumes, etc, the whole stuff.
Today they've announced that they have been forced to change that logo, because there were 13 circles in it. They've had to change that to 14 circles, since especially Italian and American travellers felt very uncomfortable with the old logo.
I can't believe some people start counting the circles that make up a logo, just because they're afraid their might be 13 of them. How do these people get through the day?
With lots and lots of counting.
I don't know if the "Procter and Gamble is Satanic" rumor was big in Belgium, but that company (a big, multinational but U.S.-based, manufacturer of things like soap and toothpaste) had to change its logo, which was a drawing of a moon and stars, because people claimed it "proved" that the company was run by Devil-worshippers. The evidence for this was that there were 13 stars in the drawing and the curls of the Man in the Moon's beard supposedly formed the numerals "666" (though I never saw the "666" there).
For a while, the company tried to run ads saying, "No, we don't worship Satan or sacrifice live babies," but that just gave the rumors wider distribution. Finally P&G gave up.
"...This is one of the rare times that I've heard of the UK being called 'one of those bigger countries'. Especially with it being four of them, and all..."
Let's see, there's Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and ... uh ... and ... um, that other one ...
http://www.famousbelgians.net/alphabetical.htm
I'll just give you one name, one as or more historically significant than any Brit, one that literally changed the course of history to this day: Charlemagne. No hoax here.
No, Belgium is not "amusing", and neither is English snobbery.
Saddest of all, this laughter is taking place while Great Britain really is in the midst of breaking up right before our eyes. The only difference is, none of us are laughing at our neighbor's demise.