In The Calculus Affair, Tintin and the Captain are searching Professor Topolino’s house. On page 23, Tintin picks up a book called German Research in World War II, by Leslie E. Simon. In fact, there is such a book, listed as out of print by on-line book stores. Its complete title is Secret Weapons of the Third Reich : German Research in World War II, by Leslie E. Simon. In Hergé’s illustration of the cover, the rocket looks suspiciously like the rocket in Destination Moon. For more on the real persons, buildings, locations and objects behind Hergé’s drawings, see Tintin: The Complete Companion.

Syldavian: Here’s a full page on the language of Syldavia by Mark Rosenfelder. The language is also discussed on The Linguist List, as in this example.

Tintin Links can be found at the Hergé Foundation Official Site and many, many links can be found with a Google search.

An invaluable source for The Tintin Trivia Quiz is the wonderful Tintin and the World of Hergé, by Benoît Peeters. Another is Tintin The Complete Companion, by Michael Farr. Both highly recommended for Tintin fans. The Making of Tintin series, which we haven’t seen, includes: The Making of Tintin: Cigars of the Pharaoh & The Blue Lotus, The Making of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn & Red Rackham’s Treasure, The Making of Tintin: In the World of the Inca and Mission to the Moon.

Ball lightning: The Seven Crystal Balls features a phenomenon called ball lightning. (It also occurs on page 29 of The Broken Ear.)

• ABC’s News in Science explains ball lightning.
• Peter Weiss’s “Anatomy of a Lightning Ball” (Science News, p78, 02/09/02).
• You may find more information with a search engine or a library search.

Tintin icons can be downloaded on InfoMac here (78K download). A Google search on “tintin icon” will yield more.

Tintin desktop tiles. Use these files to make a tiled Tintin background for your computer. In Mac OS X, place these small images (in TIFF format, for easy conversion) in a folder and drag to the Desktop System Preferences panel. In Mac OS 9, open the file in an image editor, select all, copy, then paste in the Appearances Control Panel.

The TIFF files are about 65 k. Tintin Oldstyle (shown at left), Tintin Newstyle, and Tintin in Tibet.

Translations: Interested in producing a translation of this site? Contact us by e-mail for permission. Enjoy The Tintin Trivia Quiz? Write a language other than English? We’d love to produce a page with script translations of the title of our site, “The Tintin Trivia Quiz” in some of the languages that show up in the American editions of the Tintin books. Examples might be Arabic, as seen in The Red Sea Sharks, and Chinese, as seen in The Blue Lotus.

Hieroglyphs
In Cigars of the Pharaoh, Tintin enters the tomb of Kih Oskh on page 7. Bands of hieroglyphs decorate the walls. On page 8, frame 11, a reader from Peru found some very odd hieroglyphs: a pair of crossed eyes, arrows pointing up and down, a telephone and a panel truck or minivan. Readers might be interested in looking for more unusual hieroglyphs in the tomb of Kih Oskh, such as exclamation points and tobacco pipes. For further reading on real hieroglyphs, try a web search on “hieroglyph” or “hieroglyphic.”