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Park visitors won’t get forty shillings on a drum, but if French politician Yves Jégo has his way, they will get to experience the life and times of Napoleon Bonaparte. He plans to build, at a projected cost of $280 million, a theme park inspired by the French emperor:
The plan is to build the unlikely amusement park on the site of the brilliant but doomed French leader’s final victory against the Austrians in the Battle of Montereau in 1814 just south of Paris.
The 1815 Battle of Waterloo, in which the Duke of Wellington ended Napoleon’s rule in France, could be recreated on a daily basis with visitors perhaps even able be able to take part in the reenactments.
They will also be able to take in a water show recreating the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar, in which Lord Nelson scored a decisive victory over a French and Spanish coalition aboard HMS Victory but died in the process.
Link -via Samizdata | Image: Jacques-Louis David -via Direktor
Before the development of photography, and even for some time afterward, one of the customs right after the death of someone important was to cast a death mask, to ensure there was a lasting representation of what that person looked like. After all, statues would be commissioned someday! Napoleon Bonapart’s death mask was (and still is) particularly popular.
Following Napoleon’s death, demand for his uncommonly life-like, and, dare we say, rather handsome, deathly visage was high. Reproductions of the cast made by his attending doctors were copied, and copied again. As a result, there are many questions about the authenticity of the masks, up to and including controversy over whether it is even the face of the emperor at all.Today Napoleon’s death mask can bee seen in museums from North Carolina to Liverpool, Paris to Havana, Cuba.
Read more about death masks at Atlas Obscura blog. Link
Being the older brother of Napoleon Bonaparte wasn’t an easy job. Joseph wanted to be a writer, but instead had to rule Naples and then Spain. When Napoleon was defeated, Joseph set sail for the United States, where he eventually settled in …New Jersey!
Bonaparte may have been dethroned, but he was still royalty. He built up the estate to reflect his social standing.
He constructed a vast mansion for himself, with a large wine cellar, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, elaborate crystal chandeliers, marble fireplaces and grand staircases. His library held the largest collection of books in the country at the time (eight thousand volumes versus the sixty-five hundred volumes of the Library of Congress).
The land surrounding the mansion was elaborately landscaped and featured ten miles of carriage paths, rare trees and plants, gazebos, gardens, fountains and an artificial lake stocked with imported European swans.
But life in the Garden State was not all fun and games. Joseph Bonaparte dealt with some who sought revenge against his name, the wife who would not immigrate with him, and even the Jersey Devil! Read all about Bonaparte’s American life at mental_floss. Link
Napoleon Wine Bottle Stopper – $11.95
Do you know someone who is a bit of a petty tyrant when it comes to fine wines? Get them the Napoleon Wine Bottle Stopper from the NeatoShop. This essential wine accessory has never been so authoritarian.
Be sure to check out all the impressive Cocktail & Barware available at the NeatoShop!
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To protect the country from an invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte, Britain built 103 towers along its southern shore to spot and slow down a French invasion force. The Martello towers, as they were called, had walls 30 feet tall and 13 feet thick. Some survive to this day, and industrial designer Duncan Jackson decided to convert one into a house:
It was the undulating new plywood roof, swooping over three-quarters of the battlements, that did most to turn Tower Y into a modern home. This elegant parasol not only provides a dramatic ceiling for the top floor living space, kitchen and dining area, it also allows mesmerising 360-degree views of the Suffolk coast: on one side tractors plough fields; on the other, vast ships plough the last leg of journeys from, say, China to Felixstowe.
Here is a special place to cook, entertain, or just while away the day. Stroll out onto the terrace and you feel as if you’ve walked from the bridge of a modern liner out on to its deck, where you stand bathed in light and sucking in sea air. Only the two spiral staircases beckoning from the sides suggest that, below decks, there’s another dimension: a cavernous, circular brick chamber, with oak floors set around a vast central brick column. Here, lit by windows set into those deep walls, is another ravishing living space.
You can see pictures of this luxury home at the link.
Link via io9 | Photo: Piercy Conner Architects
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One of the most glorious sites in France is the Les Invalides, a complex of buildings featuring a hospital, museum, and mausoleum where the spirits of soldiers and the turbulent past of France make this site a memorable experience.
The Église St. Louis des Invalides was the grand initiative of Bruant and his successor Mansart. On display within the walls of this masterpiece are the many flags captured by the French army. Soon after, Louis XIV constructed the Eglise du Dome, built in the vision of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. A section was cleared from the north of the central building to the River Seine and the Pont Alexandre III. It was here that the most recognizable and influential leaders of the military were laid to rest, including Napoleon Bonaparte.
From the Upcoming 
ueue, submitted by lannaxe96.
Last week marked the anniversary of the date that Napoleon abdicated and was then exiled to the Island of Elba. Thanks to high school history, we know plenty about Napoleon’s military campaigns and political dealings, but maybe not so much about the dude himself. Here are a few tidbits about him you probably didn’t learn in your fifth period History of the World class.
He was born Napoleone di Buonaparte and his parents called him Nabulio.
When he was a schoolboy, royal inspectors examined each child on how his studies and personal development were coming and then recommended a future career. One of Napoleon’s reviews said he was distinguished in mathematics, but “very poor in social accomplishments” and said he should become a naval officer. Go figure. Another one reported that he was domineering and stubborn, and a third one said he should look to the army for a job.
Napoleon did well by his siblings once he was in the position to give them titles and properties and privileges. Here were the titles of his seven siblings:
• Joseph, his only older sibling, was made King of Naples and Sicily, King of Spain and the Indies, Comte de Survilliers.
• Lucien, the brother who came immediately after Napoleon, was Prince of Canino and Musignano. His male heirs received the same title, but it was really a pretty fluff title and was never legally recognized in France. Lucien and Napoleon clashed a lot, so it’s no surprise that Napoleon didn’t do as well by this brother.
• Elisa, his first sister, became an Imperial Highness of France, the Duchess of Lucca and Princess of Piombino, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Comtesse de Compignano.
• 
Louis, the fourth Buonaparte son, was styled the Prince of France, King of Holland and Comte de Saint-Leu.
• Pauline was Napoleon’s favorite sister (that’s her on the left). He made her a Princess of France and a Princess and Duchess of Guastalla. She was kind of a wild child and had numerous affairs and trysts. Eventually, she married into the rich Italian Borghese family and furthered her ego by using her ladies-in-waiting as footstools.
• Caroline was a Princess of France, Grand Duchess Consort of Berg and Cleves, Queen Consort of Naples and Sicily, Princess Consort Murat, Comtesse de Lipona. Caroline hated Josephine with a passion and arranged for him to have an affair. When he married Marie-Louise, she was horribly jealous and mean to her as well.
• Finally, Jerome, the French Prince, King of Westphalia, 1st Prince of Montfort (his father-in-law gave him the latter title).
Because of his heirs and his illegitimate children and the plethora of children from his many siblings, there are lots of Napoleonic descendants floating around out there. Among them:
• Charles Joseph Bonaparte, the grandson of Napoleon’s brother Jerome, the United States Secretary of the Navy and the United States Attorney General under Teddy Roosevelt. He also founded the Bureau of Investigation in 1908, which later turned into the FBI.
• René Murat Auberjonois, whom you might know as Father Mulcahy from the M*A*S*H movie, Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or Paul Lewiston from Boston Legal. His mother was the great-great granddaughter of Napoleon’s sister Caroline.
• Marie Bonaparte was a French author and pscyhoanalyst who had close ties with Sigmund Freud. Her great grandfather was Napoleon’s brother, Lucien. She was very vocal about her sexual “frigidity” and helped conduct experiments that would have impressed Kinsey himself (I’ll let you decide if you want to read up on those or not). She was also a noted Edgar Allan Poe scholar.
Josephine was the older woman – she was 32 when she married 26-year-old Napoleon. She already had two children by her first husband Alexandre François Marie de Beauharnais. Their daughter, Hortense, actually married Napoleon’s brother Louis. Napoleon, of course, had requested it, and the marriage was an unhappy one.
Napoleon and Josephine ended up divorcing not because of the affairs, which both of them were having, but because Josephine was unable to produce an heir to the throne. She agreed to a divorce so Napoleon could marry his mistress, Archduchess of Austria Marie Louise, in the hopes that she would be able to have his son, and indeed she did. Another fun fact: Marie Louise was the grand-niece of Marie Antoinette.
Despite the divorce, and despite the fact that he told a friend that he truly loved her but didn’t respect her, Napoleon’s last words were, “France, armée, tête d’armée, Joséphine.”(“France, army, head of the army, Joséphine.”)
It’s believed that four real copies of Napoleon’s death mask exist, and one of them managed to find its way to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Here’s how that happened, according to the school. Dr. Antommarchi, one of the doctors present when Napoleon died, made copies of the death mask originally cast by Dr. Francis Burton. Antommarchi traveled to the U.S. in 1834 and presented a bronze copy to the city of New Orleans and a plaster copy to a colleague there. When the colleague died, the plaster copy was handed down to friend and UNC alum Francis Bryan, who in turn donated it to his alma mater. The UNC President liked to keep Napoleon’s likeness on his desk (paperweight?); eventually it ended up in the library. It’s still in the UNC collection today. Photo via UNC University Libraries.
Strangely, Napoleon’s penis can also be found in the United States. Or at least, an object purported to be Napoleon’s penis is here somewhere. Along with all of the doctors present for Napoleon’s last breath was a priest named Vignali. Vignali apparently removed some of Napoleon’s organs during the subsequent autopsy, the family jewels among them. Vignali’s descendants held on to this gem until 1916, when they sold all of their Napoleonic artifacts to a British book firm. In 1977, several auctions later, John K. Lattimer, a former chairman of urology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, bought the shriveled sea horse (that’s seriously how it was described) for a cool $3,000. As of 1987, he still had it, but it’s not really been mentioned since then.
No doubt you know the delightful Napoleon pastry, but I bet you don’t know the connection between the dessert and the ruler. OK, that was a trick question… there is none. The name probably come from “napolitain,” the French adjective for Naples, Italy. There’s no reason to believe that the food and the man are linked at all.
Napoleon Dynamite was not named after Napoleon. But it’s kind of a controversial name anyway – Elvis Costello first coined the name as early as 1982 on a B-side and most notably used it as a pseudonym on his 1986 Blood and Chocolate album. Writer Jared Hess says he had no idea that Elvis Costello put those two words together more than 20 years before his movie. He claims his inspiration came from a guy by that name in Cicero, Illinois, whom Hess met in 2000. I think they’re probably both true… perhaps the guy in Cicero called himself that after the Elvis Costello pseudonym.
You probably already know this, but although Napoleon in George Orwell’s Animal Farm was named after Napoleon Bonaparte, the character wasn’t based on him. Napoleon the pig actually represented Joseph Stalin. Because it was illegal to name a pig “Napoleon” in France (seriously), he was called “Cesar” in the French version of the book.
Life-size replica of Napoleon’s hand, anyone? Anyone? It’s only $29.95 at Design Toscano! Need I remind you that the gift-giving season is upon us?
When Napoleon was sent to St. Helena by the British, they annexed the closest chain of islands to prevent the French from attempting to rescue him. After all, who wouldn’t travel a mere 2430 km over rough and hostile seas in order to rescue the Emperor himself? Yes, that’s right, the islands of Tristan Da Cunha closest neighboring land mass, the island of St. Helena, is 2430 km away.
Tristan Da Cunha has a radio station, a convenience store, beautiful wildlife, and an active volcano! Link
