French language Q&A Forum

This lesson has me scratching my head with the simple question - why is it here? One of the very few things I remember from O level french (failed) was that regular past participles form ER>é, IR>i and RE>u so to my way of thinking battre follows the regular rule. Maybe this is because french is taught differently in France than it was in England 40 years ago, I remember reading somewhere that the french don't have the same concept of group 3 (-RE) verbs but have several smaller groups including -DRE.

Could you provide additional explanation for this: When the time expressed uses hour numbers above 12 (in the "24-hour clock" -> 13h, 14h...), you use instead quinze, trente, quarante-cinq, probably for pronunciation (and elegance) . 

I am having a hard time understanding these translations in the examples of a 24 hour clock.