A World War II bomb has been found yesterday in the afternoon near Le Mans‘ aerodrome. It is not unusual to find such a thing in France, but it always freaks people out, mainly because it is still a functioning bomb.
While working on a new parking lot for airplanes, a worker found this 250kg, 90 cm long and 26 cm in diameter obus and alerted the authorities. After evacuation of the perimeter, the bomb was diffused: “plus de peur que de mal“.
Le Mans is best known for its sports car endurance race called “les 24h du Mans“ (pics) or Grand Prix of Endurance (more pics) which runs on a track containing closed public roads that are meant not only to test a car and driver’s ability to be quick, but also to last over a 24-hour period. That “circuit” is called Circuit of the Sarthe after the name of the “departement”
The motorcycle race is mid-April this year and the car one is in June (website)
The “Paris-Dakar” race started on the 3rd of this month . You would think that it would start in Paris and end in Dakar… well, you’ll learn that the French don’t usually function logically: this year the race begins in Buenos Aires, Argentina. And doesn’t finish in Paris, or even in France, but no other place than Buenos Aires, Argentina. (official site)
That’s right! It’s going in circle.
It used to be an actual Paris-Dakar but after a lot of criticism, only the name stayed.
This competition is not extremely interesting. It used to be a big thing, covered almost 24/7 on network channels (la 5) la 5 and people would watch it to follow their favorite celebrity fulfill their hobby by crossing a horizon of sand and poor cities in the desert. And when it’s not a celebrity, it is a longtime dream of someone’s who took 5 loans and managed to get some sponsors to finally race and eventually get bitten by a snake.
Three of the main names I can remember from that race:
A lot of relatively famous people participated to that race including Johnny and Balavoine. One of Johnny’s comment on the race back in ‘06 is something you should listen to, it’s very Johnny-like.
One day he arrived 1H15 after the first car and said to the journalist “well, if we hadn’t lost 1h15 minutes we would have been here 1h15 minutes earlier”.
Anyways, Balavoine (singer) died during the Paris-Dakar, hovering the race in ‘86. The helicopter crashed in a dune. He was very involved politically and against Mitterrand and some people didn’t believe it was an accident. I personally think that a lot of “coincidences” happened under Mitterrand, like for example Bérégovoy ’s sudden death… but that’s just me.
Here is a short video illustrating what kind of competition this is and how many types of vehicles participate to it this year:
The favorite of them all won tonight. He is officially the best soccer player of the year. Here is the news in ElPaís (Spanish) and in MaisFutbol (Portugués).
