Someone recently invented a submarine explorer that looks like a shark -- something right out of Tintin's Red Rackham Treasure. As it happens, that comic was indeed the inspiration for the contraption!
Srini just referred to an article about Tintin. Incidentally, just yesterday I was browsing the interesting store called Karikter, off of Union Square here in SF, and picked up a couple of small toy figures, including those of Tintin and Thompson & Thomson. Though Americans hardly know of Tintin but everyone else in the world does. And, yes, did you know Tintin's the only comic characters to be honoured by Dalai Lama for spreading awareness in the world about Tibet? Tintin in Tibet remains one of the reasons I find traveling, mountain climbing, Tibet, remote monasteries so alluring.
Tinin also makes a good way to connect with people from different parts of the world. I remember I was having dinner in a very international crowd -- German, French, Indian(myself), Dutch, Arab -- and I brought up Tintin. Everyone looked at me with blank stares. They hadn't heard of him. Strange. Snowy? No. Thompson and Thomson? No. It couldn't be happening, I thought. In a final attempt, at the risk of looking and feeling totally ridiculous, I started describing the two crazy detectives. The moustaches, the crazy antics, "with a 'p'"... "Dupond et Dupont!" cried the French guy. "Shultze and Shulze", goes the German. "Jansen and Janssen", went the Dutch!
International currency -- that's what Tintin is.
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