Kudos to Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner. Their tour-de-force translation forms the foundation of the American Editions. (The new translations for the ebook versions miss much of the humor and contain some outright English errors.)
The Written Quiz Answers page contains a few errors in The Adventures of Tintin, see answer 87.
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. 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. 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
Ball Lightning takes Cuthbert Calculus for a ride.
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.
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 (Australia) News in Science explains ball lightning. Peter Weiss’s “Anatomy of a Lightning Ball” (Science News, p78, 02/09/02).
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.