More than Bastille, Bonaparte, and brie: Test your knowledge of France with our quiz!

Charles Platiau / Reuters

With a culture and history as rich as the wines that originate from its pastoral lands, France has been loved, envied, and loathed by peoples and nations the world over. From Matisse to Marie Antoinette, from Napoleon to Charles de Gaulle, the land of the Franks has for centuries relished a leading role on the global stage. How much do you know about the land of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité?

1. What was the Vichy Government?

The summertime relocation of the French court to the countryside town of Vichy under King Louis XIV

A puppet regime that oversaw Nazi-occupied French territories during World War II

Wartime government run by French forces from unoccupied city of Bordeaux from 1940 to 1944

The new administration that came to power in France immediately after World War II and was tasked with reconstruction

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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