In 1948, in the aftermath of the Second World War, with Europe still in ruins, three young Belgian comic strip artists, Joseph Gillain (aka Jijé), Maurice de Bevere (aka Morris) and André Franquin, crossed the Atlantic with the intention of settling in the US. All three would eventually return to Belgium, their hopes of working for Disney ultimately dashed by the turmoil of the McCarthy years. However, in the meantime they made the acquaintance of their colleagues of the Charles William Harvey Studio in New York, including a cosmopolitan young wit named René Goscinny. [more inside]
posted by Skeptic on Oct 29, 2009 - 37 comments

Mobtown beats the meat while vegetarians bet Ghent.
posted by minimii on Oct 17, 2009 - 22 comments

Every evening since July 2nd 1928*, at precisely eight o'clock, the Last Post has been played under the Menin Gate in Ieper (Ypres, "Wipers" as it was known to British tommies), Belgium. The ritual - performed by buglers from the local fire brigade - honours British and Commonwealth soldiers killed in the five battles at Ypres in the First World War. Today is the 27,888th day of the Last Post ceremony. [more inside]
posted by MuffinMan on Sep 26, 2009 - 16 comments

They follow you on the escalator and bother you at the bus stop. They spook your horses and frighten your children. But deep down, they just want to be loved. Belgian animators Thijs de Cloedt and Wouter Sel from Volstok Telefunken have imagined monsters for all occasions. [Website in Flemish]
posted by embrangled on Mar 16, 2009 - 14 comments

Happy Birthday Tintin, whatever your sexuality! (maybe you're just confused)
posted by Artw on Jan 11, 2009 - 79 comments

Would you care to relax in the bosom of my family this christmas? Freed from the formality of working life? Christmas Tidings from Mr. Cholmondley-Warner and Grayson (SLHEYT) [more inside]
posted by Senor Cardgage on Dec 24, 2008 - 2 comments

Marc Moulin, Belgian pop culture polymath and electropop pioneer, has died. Moulin was probably best known outside of Belgium for the electronic group Telex, founded in 1978 with Dan Lacksman and Michel Moers. Telex scored an international hit with Moskow Diskow, made a great video for their version of Twist a Saint-Tropez, did anything but Rock Around the Clock and, most famously, entered the 1980 Eurovision Song Contest with a cheerfully mocking song titled Euro-Vision. [more inside]
posted by grounded on Oct 7, 2008 - 8 comments

Save Budweiser! – An American beer titan may be bought up by evil Europeans, only you can save it!
posted by Artw on Jun 12, 2008 - 134 comments

German newspaper Der Spiegel decided to take a look at Europe's oddest folk traditions and festivals. Perhaps you can have a metaphorical hard-on for the phallus festival of Tyrnavos, Greece. Maybe you're hungry for how a small Belgian town celebrates the practice of swallowing live fish. Or, alternately, you can look down on those bizarre practices... while chasing a giant wheel of cheese down a hill. [more inside]
posted by huskerdont on Jun 3, 2008 - 20 comments

But is it art? Apparently so - A page of original Tintin artwork by Belgian artist Hergé becomes part of the Pompidou Centre's permanent collection of Modern Art, the first comics artwork to do so despite Frances vibrant comics culture.
posted by Artw on May 22, 2008 - 18 comments

Baarle-Hertog/Baarle-Nassau has been previously mentioned in MeFi. A historical quirk and geographical jigsaw, these days the complicated border criscrossing this Belgo-Dutch town had become little more than a tourist attraction. What happens, however, when a dead body is found, and nobody knows in which country it lies?
posted by Skeptic on Mar 12, 2008 - 13 comments

Subtropical sea-louse! It's the Tintinologist, an encyclopedia of Tintin, including such treats as all 195 of Captain Haddock's curses and an interview with Tintin's longtime translators.
posted by Rumple on Jan 1, 2008 - 20 comments

Interesting goings-on in Belgium (really). "Plucky little" Belgium, HQ of the very post-national European Union, is in the throes of a deep political crisis, driven by strong nationalistic feelings. The winner of the recent general election, Yves Leterme, has proved [FL] unable [FR] to form a government across the Flemish-French divide, and talk of the country splitting two (or even three) is more serious than ever before. [more inside]
posted by athenian on Aug 24, 2007 - 66 comments

400,000 jobs? Or 40,000 blowjobs?
posted by PeterMcDermott on May 13, 2007 - 44 comments

At 33 meters, Nemo 33 in Brussels, Belgium is the world's deepest indoor pool.
posted by Burhanistan on Mar 22, 2007 - 37 comments

Belgium is no more. Flanders has unilaterally declared independence, and the king has left the country in protest, RTBF reports.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Dec 14, 2006 - 54 comments

One-Nil to Google against old media. As Inside Google says, the search engine "responding to Belgian newspaper’s complaints about being included in Google News and the Google cache, as well as a court ruling that they remove those newspapers from their services, decided to show them who’s boss and banned the newspapers outright from Google Belgium’s search results." Or, news organisation misunderstands the benefits of new media and pays dearly.
posted by feelinglistless on Sep 21, 2006 - 45 comments

Dancing droplets begets Water figures. The full set.
posted by tellurian on Aug 16, 2006 - 8 comments

Kattenstoet, a triennial cat parade is this weekend in Ypres, Belguim. The festival culminates with Kattenworp, the hurling of kittens from the Cloth Hall Belfry, a continuation of Europe's long ambiguous history of fascination with the feline. [more inside]
posted by If I Had An Anus on May 9, 2006 - 18 comments

Trappist Ale. (warning, music on first link.) The six Belgian breweries Achel (little English), Chimay, Orval, Rochefort (unofficial site), Westmalle (no English), and Westvleteren, along with the Dutch brewery De Konigshoeven/La Trappe (first is English link to monastery, second is non-English brewery site.) are the only recognized producers of Trappist beers, although the latter was only recently granted the appellation after several years without it. Ranging from the relatively commercial and large-scale operations of Chimay and La Trappe to the other extreme of Westvleteren, who want to live quietly and don't want their beer distributed, these beers are considered some of the best in the world.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim on Mar 4, 2006 - 38 comments

The Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks. For "Stupid in America," a special report ABC will air Friday, we gave identical tests to high school students in New Jersey and in Belgium. [...] The Belgian kids called the American students "stupid." Interesting insights into the different school systems employed in both countries.
posted by slater on Jan 14, 2006 - 124 comments

Belgian authorities allow free registration of .be domain names in a temporary promotion. Hilarity ensues. (apparently metafilter.be is still available)
posted by Count Ziggurat on Nov 13, 2005 - 62 comments

Teenage Mum. A public information film for the gaming generation (embedded Quicktime movie). [via Edge]
posted by davehat on Apr 21, 2005 - 14 comments

Straight outta Belgium, it's "The Matrix: The Beginning". This is a see-it-to-believe-it occasion. [20m WMV; Trailer for those with a lower tolerance for this sort of nonsense; Main site]
posted by Pretty_Generic on Feb 20, 2005 - 40 comments

Spain to legalize Same Sex Marriages. Fulfilling a campaign promise, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's socialist government is on the verge of making Spain only the third country in Europe to legalize same sex marriages after the Netherlands and Belgium. This and other progressive legislation has led angry bishops of the Spanish Church and other religious groups to start a campaign against Zapatero's “social revolution” that is converting Spain into one of the most liberal countries in all of Europe. [more inside]
posted by sic on Dec 30, 2004 - 61 comments

Belgiumview.
posted by hama7 on Apr 23, 2004 - 8 comments

Dutroux to face jury trial This one's a shocker. Marc Dutroux has been held in custody in Belgium since 1996, having been arrested for the kidnap and killing of several young girls. There's 2 theories why the Belgian legal system has been unable to bring this guy to trial - either gross incompetence, or a conspiracy to protect those more important than himself, going all the way up to the government. [ more inside ]
posted by derbs on Apr 30, 2003 - 8 comments

Belgium guts 'genocide law' to end war crimes cases against Sharon, Bush Sr., others About time this absurd law got taken off the books. Good to see the transnationalist Europeans live by their words and stick to truly international bodies instead of this farce.
posted by billsaysthis on Apr 5, 2003 - 8 comments

"A court found 19 inhabitants of the same village guilty of systematically raping or sexually abusing an eleven-year-old girl who had been prostituted by her own father."

Third-world litany? Try Belgium.
posted by donkeyschlong on Sep 3, 2002 - 42 comments

Hot air balloons! Great site out of Belgium with a database of 850 balloons from all over the world, from panda bears (Japan) to yellow submarines (Russia), and including multiple versions of such shapes as Humpty Dumpty, Tony theTiger, and (especially) liqour bottles. And check out the album. Any balloonists out there?
posted by ferris on Dec 26, 2001 - 12 comments

In Flanders Fields - by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields


MetaFilter readers wherever you are, please take a moment of silence to honour those who gave their lives so that we could live ours.
posted by PWA_BadBoy on Nov 11, 2001 - 75 comments

Belgium schoolchildren give up lunchtime milk, pop, and fruit drinks for low-alcohol beer. Once I got over my "American sensibilities" this seems like a good idea.
posted by skallas on Jun 28, 2001 - 29 comments

Mass grave of 24 World War I dead discovered in France. There's no way history is boring. Especially to a Belgian or French farmer.
posted by luser on Jun 20, 2001 - 8 comments

Belgium agrees to legalize pot Will this change in the legalization of pot change in our country too some 75 years from now?
posted by Postroad on Feb 28, 2001 - 11 comments

Am I Shot Or Not? (Yeah, I know, but Ashcroft stories are boring.) The Belgian embassy says that Kabila has been assassinated; the British embassy isn't so sure. Strangely, if he has been killed, it's likely to improve the prospect for peace, as the surrounding nations will try to use the power vacuum as an opportunity to negotiate themselves out of the civil war.
posted by holgate on Jan 16, 2001 - 7 comments