Never stop smoking cigars

More Gabrielle Petit memorabilia. I managed to get hold of a cigar band figuring her portrait. The cigar band with her portrait actually exists in 5 different colors: yellow, blue, red, purple and green!



The Petit band is part of series of bands with 12 women's portraits. I found it rather curious to find out who the other women were:

Cleopatra (obvious?)
queen Astrid of Belgium: born in Sweden, she was married to king Leopold III and died in a car accident in 1935. Mother of our present and previous king
George Sand: writer, unhappily in love with Frederic Chopin
Sarah Bernhardt: during the First World War - at the age of 70 - she supported the war effort by playing in patriotic theatre plays and films
queen Victoria: she was one of the first women to go to the French Riviera for holidays
Marie Curie: Maria Salomee Skłodowska-Curie, discoverd polonium and radium
Catharina II of Russia: her full name is Sophie Friederike Auguste von Anhalt-Zerbst, which sounds quite Dutch to me
Edith Cavell another heroine from the First World War
Pearl Buck: the first (American) woman to win the Pulitzer and the Nobel prize for literature
Mme de pompadour: mistress of Louis XV of France

This does make me wonder who makes up this kind of lists and on what criteria? It is rather strange to see Gabrielle Petit listed next to Cleopatra and George Sand. Another remarkable thing is that the people connected to the First World War are kind of over overrepresented in the list (Petit, Cavell, Bernhardt)

The series of cigar bands was issued by 'Principal' (=brand of cigars) in 1987. I always thought Gabrielle Petit was completely forgotten in Belgium until she was rehabilitated in 2005 through the national 'Grootste Belg' election. But I guess she was never forgotten by true cigar lovers. Never stop smoking cigars.