Trying to create first product # character causes errors

[biowebshop]

Hi I just installed Prestashop as we plan to move from Magento.  I was trying to create my first product but it seems like the Prestashop does not like certain characters.

When I add the # character to my heading as in "This is our #1 Best Seller"   I get thrown an error "This value is not valid"  "Unable to update settings".  When I remove the # character then

it seems to update ok.

Also I was just going to copy and paste my text from Magento into the long and short descriptions and I get thrown the same error.   My server is running Apache2/PHP 7.2.x/Mysql

When i post short sentence descriptions its is hit and miss.  Maybe my server is missing a PHP module?  If so then why did the installer pass all my pre-flight checks and install successfully.

The installation seemed to go ok but it is possible that I missed something.  Has anyone experienced anything like this and know what might be misconfigured in my system?

This is a brand new pristine Linux installed OS.