Timeline France 1870-1920
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1870 Jan 9,
Alexander Herzen (b.1812), Russian author, died in France. In 1961 US
Prof. Martin Malia (1924-2004) authored “Alexander Herzen and the Birth
of Russian Socialism (1812-1855).
(www.bookrags.com/biography/aleksandr-ivanovich-herzen/)(SFC, 11/24/04,
p.B6)
1870 Jan 10, Victor Noir (22),
French journalist, was killed by Prince Pierre Bonaparte. Noir "had
called on him with a companion to present his editor's challenge to a
duel because of a journalistic dispute concerning Corsican politics.”
Public sentiment over Noir's death forces Napoleon III to abdicate. A
statue of Noir’s prostrate figure became a magnet for infertile women
rubbing themselves against him as a sexual charm.
(SSFC, 10/31/04,
p.F9)(www.alsirat.com/silence/cemtime/time4.html)
1870 May 8, In France a national
plebiscite voted confidence in the Empire with about 84% of votes in
favor. On the eve of the plebiscite members of the Paris Federation
were arrested on a charge of conspiring against Napoleon III. This
pretext was further used by the government to launch a campaign of
persecution of the members of the International throughout France.
(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1870 Jul 19, The Franco-Prussian
War began. Napoleon declared war on Bismarck. Emperor Napoleon III of
France declared war on Germany under Otto von Bismarck. Napoleon was
defeated in three months and abdicated.
(WSJ, 3/14/95, p.A-16)(V.D.-H.K.p.260)(AP, 7/19/07)
1870 Jul 23, In France Marx
completed what will become known as his "First Address."
(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1870 Jul 26, In France Marx’s
"First Address" was approved and internationally distributed by the
General Council of the International Working Men's Association.
(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1870 Jul 27, Hilaire Belloc,
French writer (Cautionary Tales), was born.
(HN, 7/27/01)
1870 Aug 6, At the Battle at
Spicheren: Prussia beat France. Crown Prince Frederick, commanding one
of the three Prussian armies invading France, defeated French Marshal
MacMahon at Worth and Weissenburg, pushed him out of Alsace, surrounded
Strasbourg, and drove on towards Nancy. Two other Prussian armies
isolated Marshal Bazaine's forces in Metz.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Spicheren)(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1870 Aug 18, Prussian forces
defeated the French at the Battle of Gravelotte during the
Franco-Prussian War. French Commander Bazaine's efforts to break his
soldiers through the German lines were bloodily defeated at
Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte. The Prussians advanced on Chalons.
(HN,
8/18/98)(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1870 Sep 1, The Prussian army
crushed the French under Marshal MacMahon at Sedan, the last battle of
the Franco-Prussian War.
(HN, 9/1/99)(PCh, 1992, p.516)
1870 Sep 2, Napoleon III with
80,000 men capitulated to the Prussians at Sedan, France.
(PCh, 1992, p.516)(WSJ, 3/14/95, p.A-16)(HN, 9/2/98)
1870 Sep 4, At news of Sedan,
Paris workers invaded the Palais Bourbon and forced the Legislative
Assembly to proclaim the fall of the Empire. Emperor Louis Napoleon III
was overthrown in a bloodless coup. The 3rd French Republic was
proclaimed in Paris and a government of national defense was formed.
(HN, 9/4/98)(ON, 9/06,
p.12)(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1870 Sep 5, Author Victor Hugo
returned to Paris from the Isle of Guernsey where he had lived in exile
for almost 20 years.
(HN, 9/5/00)
1870 Sep 19, Two Prussian armies
began a 135-day siege of Paris as the 2nd Empire collapsed. This forced
the people of the city to eat Castor and Pollux, the 2 elephants in the
zoo.
(PCh, 1992, p.516)(SFC, 4/17/99, p.B3)
1870 Sep 23, Prosper Merimee (66),
French playwright (Carmen), died.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/merimee.htm)
1870 Sep 24, George Claude, French
engineer, was born. He invented the neon light.
(HN, 9/24/00)
1870 Oct 7, French Minister of the
Interior Leon Gambetta escaped besieged Paris by balloon, hoping to
reach the French provisional government in Tours. Gambetta was slightly
wounded when his balloon drops dangerously low over Prussian held
territory, only rising to safety after the pilot jettisons the ballast.
(HN, 10/7/98)
1870 Oct 20, The Summer Palace in
Beijing, China, was burnt to the ground by a Franco-British
expeditionary force.
(HN, 10/20/98)
1870 Oct 27, The French fortress
of Metz surrendered to the Prussian Army.
(HN, 10/27/98)
1870 Oct 30, French National Guard
was defeated at Le Bourget.
(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1870 Oct 31, Upon the receipt of
news that the Government of National Defense had decided to start
negotiations with the Prussians, Paris workers and revolutionary
sections of the National Guard rose up in revolt, led by Blanqui. They
seized the Hotel de Ville (City Hall) and set up their revolutionary
government, the Committee of Public Safety, headed by Blanqui. Flourens
prevented any members of the Government of National Defense from being
shot, as had been demanded by one of the insurrectionists.
(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1870 Renoir painted the portrait
"Rapha Maitre."
(SFC, 8/29/01, p.E1)
1870 Leo Delibe wrote his ballet
"Coppelia." It was based on a tale by E.T.A. Hoffman and was first
produced this year in Paris.
(WSJ, 7/16/96, p.A9)(WSJ, 6/10/97, p.A16)
1870 In France the Hotel du Cap on
the French Riviera was commercially opened as the Villa Soleil. This is
the hotel described in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s opening of "Tender is the
Night."
(CNT, Nov.,1994, p.218)
1870 Madame Pomeroy introduced the
first brut champagne. Until this time champagne was sweet.
(Hem., 10/97, p.104)
1870 Sophus Lie (1842-1899),
Norwegian mathematician, became a media sensation after he was found
outside Paris with a backpack filled with undecipherable mathematical
notes and arrested as a spy.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophus_Lie)
1870 Frederic Bazille (29), artist
and friend of Claude Monet, died.
(WSJ, 3/9/99, p.A20)
1870 Alexandre Dumas (b.1802),
French novelist and dramatist who wrote "The Count of Monte Cristo" and
"The Three Musketeers," died. In 1851 he wrote "A Gil Blas in
California" (A Year Along the Banks of the San Joaquin and
Sacramento"). "I need several mistresses. If I only had one, she’d be
dead inside of eight days."
(SFC, 7/24/02, p.D3)
1870-1871 "The best book on this period is Emile
Zola’s historical novel The Debacle." In reference to the days of the
Paris Commune.
(WSJ, 3/14/95, p.A-16)
1870-1871 During the Franco-Prussian War there was a
shortage of beef and horse meat began to be used. Germany annexed
Alsace after the war.
(SFEC, 8/3/97, Z1 p.2)(SFEC, 1/31/99, p.T4)
1870s Edgar Degas, French painter
journeyed to New Orleans. His time in New Orleans is covered in the
1997 book "Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate
Chopin and George Washington Cable" by Christopher Benfey.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, BR p.9)
1871 Jan 8, Prussian troops began
to bombard Paris during the Franco-Prussian War.
(HN, 1/8/99)
1871 Jan 18, The German Empire
(Deutsches Kaiserreich) was proclaimed in Versailles. William I
of Prussia was proclaimed "German Emperor" (which was not the same
thing as "Emperor of Germany"). The unification of Germany was the
greatest geopolitical transformation of the period. Germany went on to
adopt the mark as its common currency.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(AP,
1/18/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany)(WSJ, 5/6/08, p.A21)
1871 Jan 22, The Paris proletariat
and the National Guards held a revolutionary demonstration, initiated
by the Blanquists. They demanded the overthrow of the government and
the establishment of a Commune. By order of the Government of National
Defense, the Breton Mobile Guard, which was defending the Hotel de
Ville, opened fire on the demonstrators. After massacring the unarmed
workers, the government began preparations to surrender Paris.
(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1871 Jan 28, France, under a
provisional republican government, continued the war against Germany,
but was forced to surrender in the Franco-Prussian War. Surrounded by
Prussian troops and suffering from famine, the French army in Paris
surrendered. During the siege, balloons were used to keep contact with
the outside world.
(V.D.-H.K.p.260)(AP, 1/28/98)(HN, 1/28/99)
1871 Jan, The bombardment of Paris
began.
(WSJ, 3/14/95, p.A-16)
1871 Feb 8, Elections were held in
France, unknown to most of the nation's population.
(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1871 Feb 12, In France the new
National Assembly opened at Bordeaux. Two-thirds of members were
conservatives and wished the war to end.
(www.marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/timeline.htm)
1871 Feb 26, France and Prussia
signed a preliminary peace treaty at Versailles.
(HN, 2/26/99)
1871 Mar 1, Germans paraded down
the Champs-Elysses, Paris, France during the Franco-Prussian War.
(HN, 3/1/99)(WSJ, 3/14/95, p.A-16)
1871 Mar 26, Paris Commune was
founded. The Parisians revolted against their government and tried to
secede by electing their own government. The Commune of Paris refused
to obey Adolphe Thiers, the elected president of the country. Thiers
asked the Germans to release thousands of French prisoners and
organized a powerful force to overcome the Commune.
(V.D.-H.K.p.260)(SS, 3/26/02)
1871 May 12,
Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber (89), French opera composer, died.
(MC, 5/12/02)
1871 May 21-July 28, French
government troops attacked the Commune of Paris; 17,000 died.
(MC, 5/21/02)
1871 May 23, In France extremists
burned the Tuileries Palace.
(SFC, 10/8/07,
p.A12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuileries_Palace)
1871 May 28, The last French
communards of the Paris commune were shot against the Mur des Federes
in Pere Lachaise cemetery by troops from Versailles.
(V.D.-H.K.p.260)(HN, 5/28/98)
1871 Jul 10, Marcel Proust
(d.1922), French novelist was born. His masterpiece was "Remembrance of
Things Past." In 1998 it was turned into a comic book series. In 1999
Edmund White published the biography "Marcel Proust" for the Penguin
Lives series. "We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to
the full."
(SFC, 9/16/98, p.A10)(SFEC, 2/7/99, Par p.14)(AP,
8/2/99)(HN, 7/10/01)
1871 Sep 11, The 1st passenger
train passed through the Mount Cenis Tunnel between France and Italy.
Work on the 8-mile tunnel had begun in 1861 under the direction of
French engineer Germain Sommeiller (d.7/11/1871).
(ON, 2/03, p.9)
1871 Oct 30, Paul Valery (d.1945),
French poet and essayist, was born in Sete. "Two dangers constantly
threaten the world: order and disorder."
(HN, 10/30/00)(AP, 6/10/00)(SSFC, 6/17/01, p.T10)
1871 Degas painted "Racehorses at
Longchamp."
(SFEC, 6/21/98, BR p.8)
1871 In France Whistler completed
his best known work: "Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the
Painter’s [Artist’s] Mother," [i.e. Whistler’s Mother] His mother, Anna
McNeill Whistler, had moved into his apartment displacing his Irish
model and sweetheart, Jo Heffernan. The mother died in 1881 and
Whistler borrowed £50 to get her portrait back from a pawn shop.
(WSJ, 5/31/95, p. A-14)(SFEC, 5/10/98, p.C6)
1871 The Rothschild banking empire
bankrolled France's reparations to Germany.
(SFC, 7/12/96, p.A11)
1871 Charles Joseph Minard, French
civil engineer, died. In 1861 he used techniques, which he had invented
to display flows of people, to create a graphic display of Napoleon’s
1812-1813 march to and from Russia.
(Econ, 12/22/07, p.74)
1872 Oct 23, Theophile Gautier
(61), French poet, writer, historian, and critic, died.
(MC, 10/23/01)
1872 Edgar Degas, French painter,
journeyed to New Orleans where his mother was born. He made 22
paintings there. His time in New Orleans is covered in the 1997 book
"Degas in New Orleans: Encounters in the Creole World of Kate Chopin
and George Washington Cable" by Christopher Benfey.
(SFEC, 1/4/98, BR p.9)(SFC, 3/5/99, p.W12)
1872 Claude Monet created his
painting: “Impression Sunrise.” In 1985 it was stolen at gunpoint from
the Marmottan Museum in Paris. In 1990 French police found it in an
abandoned villa in southern Corsica.
(ON, 9/06, p.8)
1872 Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897),
French novelist, authored “Tartarin of Tarascon,” the comic story of a
big-hearted braggart.
(WSJ, 8/30/08, p.W7)
1872 The French opera "Djamilah,"
composed by Georges Bizet, was set in Turkish-ruled Egypt. It told the
story of a Muslim pasha who buys a young mistress in the Cairo slave
market.
(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)(ON, 5/06, p.11)
1872 The opera "La Fille de Madame
Angot" was written by Charles Lecocq. An English version in 1998 by
David Scott Marley was titled "Daughter of the Cabinet."
(SFC, 7/17/98, p.D5)
1872 The light opera "Don Cesar de
Bazan," was composed by Jules Massenet.
(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)
1872-1950 Leon Blum, French statesman: "Life does not give itself to
one who tries to keep all its advantages at once. I have often thought
morality may perhaps consist solely in the courage of making a choice."
(AP, 8/22/98)
1873 Jan 7, Charles Peguy
(d.1914), French poet and writer, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_P%C3%A9guy)
1873 May 24, Leo Delibes' opera
"Le Roi l'a Dit," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 5/24/02)
1873 Jun 28, Alexis Carrel, French
surgeon and biologist, was born. He won a Nobel Prize in 1912 for the
development of blood vessel suture technique.
(HN, 6/28/99)(MC, 6/28/02)
1873 Jul 10, French poet Paul
Verlaine (1844-1896) wounded Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) with a pistol.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Rimbaud)
1873 Sep 20, A financial panic hit
the US when the high-flying bond dealer, Jay Cooke, granted too many
loans to the railroads. Panic spread to Europe as London and Paris
markets crashed and the New York Stock Exchange closed for the first
time for 10 days.
(WSJ, 2/27/95, p.A-10)(WSJ, 7/8/96, p.C1)(WSJ,
10/7/98, p.A22)
1873 Colette (d.1954), French
author, was born. Her works included "Cheri" and "Gigi." "To talk to a
child, to fascinate him, is much more difficult than to win an
electoral victory. But it is also more rewarding." In 1999 Claude
Francis and Fernande Gontier published a 2-part biography: "Creating
Colette: Volume One: From Ingenue to Libertine 1873-1913. The 2nd
volume was "From Baroness to Woman of Letters 1913-1954." Other
biographies included: "The Difficulty of Loving" by Margaret Crossland;
"Colette: A Taste for Life" by Yvonne Mitchell; "Colette" by Joanna
Richardson; "Colette: A Passion for Life" by Genevieve Dorman.
(AP, 10/18/97)(SFEC, 3/21/99, BR p.8)
1873 Henri Fantin-Latour created
his painting "Still Life: Corner of a Table."
(WSJ, 12/12/01, p.A16)
1873 Claude Monet painted
"Sunrise," a depiction of the port of La Havre with ships in the
Spring. Monet moved from Paris to Giverny in this year.
(SFC, 11/13/98, p.C8)(SSFC, 5/20/01, p.T8)
1873 Pissaro painted "Street in
Pontoise, Winter."
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D1)
1873 A French expeditionary force
in Vietnam sacked Hanoi's citadel.
(NG, May, 04, p.87)
1874 Feb 9, Jules Michelet (75),
French historian (History of France), died.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1874 Feb 12, Auguste Perret,
French architect, was born. He pioneered in designs of reinforced
concrete buildings.
(HN, 2/12/01)
1874 Mar, By the spring of this
year Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste-Renoir, Albert Sisley, Frederic
Bazille and others formed the world’s first independent artistic
association: the “Societe anonyme des peintres, sculpteurs, et
graveurs.” They gathered at Argenteuil on the banks of the Seine to
relax and paint.
(WSJ, 12/11/98, p.W16)(ON, 9/06, p.7)
1874 Apr 15, Members of the
“Societe anonyme des peintres, sculpteurs, et graveurs” opened their
first show, The First Exhibition of Independent Artists” on the
Boulevard des Capucines in Paris.
(ON, 9/06, p.7)
1874 Alfred Sisley painted "Snow
Effect at Argenteuil."
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D6)
1874 The Bordeaux Ecole de
Management was founded. In 2002 the school introduced a master’s
program in business administration for wine.
(WSJ, 3/19/02, p.B1)
1875 Jan 14, Dr. Albert Schweitzer
(d.1965), French theologian who set up a native hospital in French
Equatorial Africa (Gabon) in 1913, was born. He won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1952.
(HN, 1/14/99)(MC, 1/14/02)(AP, 10/30/03)
1875 Jan 20, Jean Francois Millet
(b.1814), French painter, died.
(www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/art.asp?aid=745)
1875 Mar 3, The opera Carmen,
composed by Georges Bizet (1873), opened in Paris at the Opera-Comique.
The opera was based on a novella by Prosper Merimee (1803-1870).
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/merimee.htm)(AP, 3/3/98)
1875 Mar 7, Composer Maurice Ravel
(d.1937) was born in Cibourne, France.
(AP, 12/28/97)(AP, 3/7/98)
1875 Jun 3, Georges Bizet
(36), French composer (Carmen, Pearl Fishers), died.
(ON, 5/06, p.12)
1875 Jul 16, The new French
constitution is finalized.
(HN, 7/16/98)
1875 Aug 25, Captain Matthew Webb
(1848-1883) became the first person to swim across the English Channel,
traveling from Dover, England, to Calais, France, in 21 hours and 45
min. Swimming the Channel entails about 35 miles of swimming due to
currents in waters that are 55 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit.
(AP, 8/25/97)(HN, 8/25/98)(ON, 2/05, p.12)
1875 Gabriel Guay exhibited his
painting "The Awakening" at the Paris Salon. It featured a nude,
life-size woman, just waking up.
(SFEM, 4/11/99, p.30)
1875 Claude Monet painted "The
Seine at Argenteuil."
(SFC, 4/10/97, p.E1)
1875 The Jacquemart-Andre mansion
in Paris was designed by Henri Parent. The building later became the
Jacquemart-Andre Musee.
(SFEC, 3/26/00, p.T12)
1876 Jun 8, French author George
Sand (b.1804 as Lucile Aurore Dupin Dudevant) died in Nohant, France.
In 1975 Curtis Cate published the biography: "George Sand." French
author. In 1993 Francis Steegmuller and Barbara Bray published their
translation of correspondence between Flaubert and Sand. In 2000
Belinda Jack authored "George Sand: A Woman’s Life Writ Large." "I
would rather believe that God did not exist than believe that He was
indifferent."
(AP, 6/8/00)(AP, 10/17/98)(SFEC, 8/27/00, BR
p.5)(WSJ, 5/12/07, p.P10)
1876 Degas painted "Absinthe."
(WSJ, 1/22/99, p.W8)
1876 Jean-Leon Gerome painted
"Solomon's Wall, Jerusalem."
(WSJ, 2/5/99, p.W12)
1876 Monet painted "Dans La
Prairie." It was expected to sell for $16-20 million in 1999. He also
did "La Repos Dans le Jardin" this year.
(WSJ, 11/5/99, p.W16)(WSJ, 5/3/02, p.W12)
1876 Renoir painted "The Garden of
the Rue Cortot" at what is now the Montmartre museum in Paris. He also
did a portrait of Alfred Sisley about this time.
(SFEC, 6/22/97, p.T11)(DPCP 1984)
1876 The 2nd Impressionist
exhibition opened in Paris featuring Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste
Renoir, Edgar Degas and Berthe Morisot.
(NMWA, 12/04, p.9)
1876 Construction of the Statue of
Liberty (Liberty Enlightening the World), a gift to the US, began in
France. The interior iron framework was designed by Alexandre Gustave
Eiffel. The design by Frederic Auguste Bartholdi included 7 rays on her
crown to represent the seven seas and continents. Her tablet was
engraved with the date July 4, 1776 in Roman numerals. Broken shackles
at her feet represented tyranny.
(SFEC, 6/20/99, p.T10)
1877 Feb 19, Louis Francois-Marie
Aubert, French composer (Habanera), was born.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1877 Mar 25, Alphonse de
Chateaubriand, French writer (Instantanes aux Pays-Bas), was born.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1877 Apr 27, Jules Massenet's
Opera "Le Roi de Lahore" was produced in Paris.
(MC, 4/27/02)
1877 Jun 3, Raoul Dufy, French
Fauvist painter (Palm), was born.
(MC, 6/3/02)
1877 Sep 3, Adolphe Thiers, 1st
president of the 3rd French Republic (1871-77), died at 80.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1877 Gustave Caillebotte French
impressionist painter, painted his "Paris Street: Rainy Day." [see
1848-1894, Caillebotte]
(WSJ, 2/23/95, p.A-10)(SSFC, 11/16/03, BR p.6)
1877 Cezanne painted "Mme. Cezanne
in a Red Armchair."
(WSJ, 2/20/96, p.A-14)
1877 Claude Monet painted "Old St.
Lazare Station, Paris." He did a series of these and captured the
atmospheric effects of steam and light through the glass roof of the
train shed.
(DPCP 1984)
1877 The oriental opera "Le Roi de
Lahore," was composed by Jules Massenet.
(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)
1877 Saint-Saens wrote his opera
"Samson et Dalila."
(WSJ, 2/20/98, p.A16)
1878 Feb 19, Charles F. Daubigny
(61), French restaurateur, painter, died.
(MC, 2/19/02)
1878 Gustave Caillebotte painted
his impressionist "View of Rooftops (Snow).
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.E1)
1878 William Adolphe Bouguereau
debuted his painting "La Charite" at the Exposition Universelle in
Paris.
(WSJ, 3/24/00, p.W4)
1878 The French Academy accepted
"humoristique" as a French word.
(Econ, 12/20/03, p.75)
1879 Feb 11, Honore Daumier
(b.1808), French caricaturist, painter, died.
(WUD, 1994 p.369)(
www.britannica.com/eb/article-9029447)
1879 Apr 16, Saint Bernadette, who
had described seeing visions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes, died in
Nevers, France.
(AP, 4/16/04)
1879 Aug 29, Jeanne Jugan
(b.1792), a French nun, died. She had helped found the Little Sisters
of the Poor. In 2009 she was canonized as a saint of the Catholic
Church.
(AP,
10/11/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Jugan)
1879 Cezanne, French painter,
painted his "Self-Portrait."
(WSJ, 9/28/95, p.A-16)
1879 Monet painted "Lavacourt in
Winter."
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D6)
1879 Pissaro painted "Rabbit
Warren at Pontoise, Snow."
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D6)
1879 Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted
"Two Little Circus Girls," a picture of Francisca and Angelina
Wartenberg, jugglers in the Spanish Cirque Fernande.
(DPCP 1984)
1879 Edmond de Goncourt published
his French novel "Les Freres Zemganno."
(Econ, 12/20/03, p.75)
1880 Jan 1, The building of the
Panama Canal was symbolically begun under the direction of French
diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps. Actual construction began a year later.
In 2007 Matthew Parker authored “Panama Fever: The Battle to Build the
Canal.”
(http://www.ared.com/history.htm)(Econ, 2/24/07,
p.96)
1880 May 8, Gustave Flaubert
(b.1821), French novelist, died. He revealed in painful detail the
small foibles of a bourgeois life and believed in perfection of form
and the absolute value of art. His work included "Madam Bovary,"
"Salammbo" and "A Simple Heart." "Our ignorance of history causes us to
slander our own times." In 2006 Frederick Brown authored “Flaubert : A
Biography.”
(V.D.-H.K.p.278)(AP, 6/19/99)(HN, 12/12/99)(WSJ,
4/15/06, p.P8)
1880 Jun 29, France annexed Tahiti.
(HN, 6/29/98)
1880 Oct 5, Jacques Offenbach,
German-French composer (La Belle Helene, Orpheus, Tales of Hoffman),
died at 61.
(MC, 10/5/01)
1880 Nov 8, Sarah Bernhardt,
French actress, made her US debut at NY's Booth Theater.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1880 Dec 11, Louis Pasteur (57),
French scientist, began an experiment to identify the microbe that
causes rabies.
(ON, 6/08, p.4)
1880 Rodin created his sculpture
"The Thinker."
(HNQ, 12/6/00)
1880 Monet painted "Sunset on the
Seine in Winter."
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D1)
1880 Renoir began his painting
"Luncheon of the Boating Party," ["The Rower’s Lunch"] the culmination
of a decade of riverscapes. It depicted a scene at the Restaurant
Fournaise on the banks of the Seine at a spot known as La Grenouillere
(the frog pond). It was completed in 1881 and sold to Duncan Philips in
1923 for $125,000.
(WSJ, 9/10/96, p.A16)(SFC, 10/30/96, p.E7)(DPCP 1984)
1880 Paul Lafargue (1842-1911),
French revolutionary and journalist, published “Le Droit a la Paresse”
(The Right to Laziness), in which he recommended that men should work
no more than three hours a day.
(Econ, 7/21/07,
p.51)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Lafargue)
1880 Guy de Maupassant wrote his
short story “Boule de Suif” (Butterball). In 2006 it premiered as an
opera by composer Stephen Hartke and librettist Philip Littell.
(WSJ, 8/8/06, p.D5)
1880 The Hotel Concorde
Saint-Lazare was built near the St. Lazare train station in Paris at
the behest of the government to encourage travel by train. In 2006 the
hotel was purchased by Westbrook Partners, an American private equity
group.
(Econ, 12/23/06, p.98)
1880 France resurrected Bastille
Day as a national holiday. The July 14 holiday had been abolished by
Napoleon Bonaparte. “La Marseillaise” was adopted as the French
national anthem. In 2008 Christopher Prendergast authored “the
Fourteenth of July: And the Taking of the Bastille.”
(Econ, 7/12/08, p.91)
1880 The French colonized
Polynesia.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.T12)
1880 The Hermes harness makers of
France added saddle-making to their manufacturing list.
(Hem., 7/95, p.27)
c1880 The Durif grape was named by
Francois Durif, French botanist and grape breeder, as the result of an
unintended crossing between two varieties. California vines labeled
Petite Sirah were later identified as Durif. In 1998 the Durif grape
was identified as a cross between the French grape Peloursin and Syrah
(SFC, 1/20/05, p.F5)
1880-1900 Rodin worked on his "Gates of Hell" over
this period. The work was later exhibited inside the Cantor Arts Center
of Stanford Univ., Ca.
(SFC, 8/18/99, p.D5)(Ind, 4/4/00,13A)
1881 Feb 4, Fernand Leger
(d.1955), French painter, was born.
(HN, 2/4/01)
1881 Mar 23, Roger Martin du
Guard, French novelist (Les Thibault-Nobel 1937), was born.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1881 Mar 23, Gas lamp set fire to
Nice, France, opera house and 70 died.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1881 May 1, Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin (d.1955), French Jesuit philosopher, paleontologist, was born.
He authored the "Phenomenon of Man" wherein he proposed the idea of the
noosphere, i.e. sphere of mind, in which all the minds of all the
humans on earth could be conceived of as both separate and as combined
in one great, single intelligence.
(V.D.-H.K.p.388)(MC, 5/1/02)
1881 May 12, The Treaty of Bardo
established Tunis [Tunisia] as a French protectorate.
(SC, internet, 5/12/97)(HN, 5/12/98)
1881 Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted
"On the Terrace," a picture of a young woman and a pink-cheeked child
with the Seine in the background.
(DPCP 1984)
1881 The grand opera "Herodiade,"
was composed by Jules Massenet.
(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)
1881-1882 Although Pierre-Auguste Renoir embraced
Impressionism early on, his travels to Algeria, Italy, and Provence
from 1881-82 led him to reject the style. Renoir came from a family of
artisans, who soon noticed and encouraged his aptitude for painting.
When Renoir decided to study painting in earnest, he found himself
stifled by the conventions and traditions of the day. Renoir and some
of his fellow students (Frédéric Bazille, Claude Monet
and Alfred Sisley) began meeting with young painters Paul
Cézanne and Camille Pissarro and a style developed. Although
critical and financial success did not come to the group with the first
Impressionist exposition of 1874, Renoir's interest in the human figure
(as opposed to landscapes) led him to receive several portrait
commissions. The trips in the early 1880s exposed him to elements of
classicism that he felt drawn to in terms of both color and
brushstrokes. However, despite his newfound interest, he retained the
use of vibrant coloration and a bucolic view of nature.
(HNQ, 5/23/01)
1882 Mar 19, Gaston Lachaise
(d.1935), Franco-American sculptor (Standing Woman), was born.
(SFC, 2/2/02, p.D1)(MC, 3/19/02)
1882 Apr 25, French commander
Henri Riviere seized the citadel of Hanoi. Capt. Henri Riviere
was later beheaded after he attempted to seize the coal deposits at Ha
long Bay. The outraged French proceeded to colonize Vietnam.
(HN, 4/25/98)(SFEC, 7/18/99, p.T4)
1882 May 13, Georges Braque
(d.1963, French cubist painter, was born in Argenteuil, near Paris. He
said of his work that: "The aim is not to reconstitute an anecdotal
fact, but to constitute a pictorial fact." He was shot in the head
during WW I and had his head drilled to relieve the pressure. His
"Billiard Tables" series was painted between 1944 and 1949.
(V.D.-H.K.p.359-360)(AHD, 1971, p.160)(WSJ, 5/7/97,
p.A16)(MC, 5/13/02)
1882 Sep 3, The French, Vietnamese
and Chinese battled at Hanoi; hundreds died.
(MC, 9/3/01)
1882 Oct 29, Jean Giraudoux,
French dramatist, novelist and diplomat, famous for his book "Tiger at
the Gates," was born. His plays included "Eglantine" and "Provinciales."
(HN, 10/29/98)(MC, 10/29/01)
1882 Nov 18, Jacques Maritain,
French Catholic philosopher (exponent of St Thomas), was born.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1882 Dec 31, Leon Michel Gambetta
(44), French attorney and premier (1881-82), died.
(MC, 12/31/01)
1882 Gaston Lachaise (d.1935),
Franco-American sculptor, was born.
(SFC, 2/2/02, p.D1)
1882 Claude Monet painted "The
Cliff Walk (Pourville)." His series of seaside cliff scenes are among
his most dramatic paintings.
(DPCP 1984)
1883 Mar 31, 1st performance of
Cesar Franck's "Le Chasseur Maudit."
(MC, 3/31/02)
1883 Apr 14, Leo Delibes' opera
"Lakme," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1883 Aug 19, Gabrielle "Coco"
Chanel (d.1971), French fashion designer, was born: "My friends, there
are no friends."
(HN, 8/19/00)(AP, 7/26/99)
1883 Oct 4, Orient Express made
its 1st run linking Istanbul, Turkey, to Paris by rail.
(MC, 10/4/01)
1883 Claude Monet made a trip to
Italy with Cezanne and Renoir and painted "The Monte Carlo Road."
(WSJ, 8/26/97, p.A14)
1883 Haiti made its final payment
to France of the 1825 "debt," renegotiated in 1838. In 2004 Haiti
demanded nearly 22 billion in restitution.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.A1)
1884 Jan 19, Jules Massenet's
opera "Manon," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 1/19/02)
1884 Jun 23, A Chinese Army
defeated the French at Bacle, Indochina.
(HN, 6/23/98)
1884 Jul 4, The Statue of Liberty
was presented to the United States in ceremonies at Paris, France. The
225-ton, 152-foot statue was a gift from France in commemoration of 100
years of American independence. Created by the French sculptor Frederic
Auguste Bartholdi, the statue was installed on Bedloe Island (now
Liberty Island) in New York harbor in 1885. It was dedicated on October
28, 1886.
(IB, Internet, 12/7/98)
1884 French artist Paul
Philippoteaux (1846-1923) and team of 20 created in Paris the massive
Cyclorama painting titled “The Battle of Gettysburg.” It was originally
377 feet in circumference. They then shipped it to the US, where it was
first displayed in Boston. The US National Park Service acquired it in
1942. In 2008 a 5-year, $15 million restoration project was completed
and it was reopened to the public at the Gettysburg National Military
Park in Gettysburg, Pa.
(SSFC, 9/28/08,
p.E2)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Philippoteaux)
1884/1885 Edgar Degas began painting his series of
pastels and oils of dancers. The first was done about this time and
titled "Danseuses."
(SFC, 8/26/97, p.A4)
1884 Claude Monet painted
"Bordighera." It was done on the French Riviera to which he returned
after a visit there with Renoir in late 1883. The paintings were marked
by bold, pure color in contrast to his earlier subdued pastels.
(DPCP 1984)
1884 Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)
painted the impressionist work "En Bateau sur le Lac de Boulogne." It
was valued in 1998 at $600-800 thousand.
(SFC, 2/14/98, p.A1)(SFC, 5/23/98, p.A19)
1884 Georges Seurat, French
artist, painted "Bathers at Asnieres."
(WSJ, 6/19/00, p.A44)
1884 The grand opera "Manon," was
composed by Jules Massenet. The libretto was based on an 18th century
novel was Abbe Prevost.
(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)
1884-1886 Georges Seurat painted "Sunday Afternoon on
the Island of La Grande Jatte." The work was heralded as a milestone of
art theory.
(DPCP 1984)
1884-1966 Georges Duhamel, French author: "If anyone
tells you something strange about the world, something you had never
heard before, do not laugh but listen attentively; make him repeat it,
make him explain it; no doubt there is something there worth taking
hold of." "It is always brave to say what everyone thinks."
(AP, 4/20/97)(AP, 11/19/99)
1885 May 22, Victor-Marie Hugo
(b.1802), French novelist (Les Miserables) and poet, died. In 1998
Graham Robb published the biography: "Victor Hugo." Hugo also did a
number of drawings, later appreciated by Andre Breton and Max Ernst,
and in 1914 Henri Focillon published the first critical study of them.
In 1998 Pierre Georgel and Marie-Laure Prevost published "Shadows of a
Hand: The Drawings of Victor Hugo."
(WSJ, 2/10/98, p.A16)(HN, 2/26/98)(SFEC, 5/31/98, BR
p.4)(MC, 5/22/02)
1885 May, Henri Rousseau, a
self-taught artist, exhibited two of his paintings at the Salon of
French Art in Paris without bothering to obtain permission. One
painting was cut with a knife and authorities removed them as soon as
they were noticed. That same month he exhibited his work at the Salon
of the Independents.
(ON, 8/08, p.8)
1885 Jun 6, Leo Delibes' opera
"Lakme" was produced in Paris.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1885 Jun 14, The 1st photo finish
horse race was recorded by Luis-Jean Delton as Paradox beat Reluisant
at the Grand Prix de Paris.
(SFC, 4/28/03, D1)
1885 Jun 26, Andre Maurois
(d.1967), French writer (Balzac), was born as Émile Herzog.
"Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time
to form."
(AP, 7/6/00)(MC, 6/26/02)
1885 Jun 17, The French naval ship
Isere arrived in NYC with a cargo of wooden crates containing the
pieces of the Statue of Liberty.
(AP, 6/17/97)(ON, 4/03, p.3)
1885 Jul 6, French scientist Louis
Pasteur (1822-1895) successfully tested an anti-rabies vaccine on a boy
bitten by an infected dog. Thanks to his vaccine the death rate from
rabies dropped to almost zero by 1888.
(AP, 7/6/97)(ON, 6/08, p.6)
1885 Oct 11, Francois Mauriac,
Nobel Prize-winning novelist, was born.
(HN, 10/11/00)
1885 Nov 30, Jules Massenet's
opera "Le Cid" had its premier in Paris. It included text from the
playwright Corneille's "Le Cid."
(WSJ, 11/18/99, p.A24)(MC, 11/30/01)
1885 Cezanne painted his
watercolor of "Madame Cezanne with hydrangeas."
(WSJ, 2/20/96, p.A-14)
1885 Berthe Morisot (d.1895),
French Impressionist, painted her self portrait.
(NMWA, 12/04, p.29)
1885 Emile Zola (1840-1902)
authored his novel “Germinal,” a fictional account of a French mining
strike. It was the 13th novel in Zola's 20-volume series Les
Rougon-Macquart.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germinal_%28novel%29)(WSJ, 10/7/97, p.A20)
1885 Alphonse Bertillon of the
Paris Police Dept. (Surete) developed the Bertillon system to help
identify criminals. It was based on a variety or personal
characteristics including hair and eye color and various body
measurements.
(ON, 4/04, p.11)
1885-1957 Sacha Guitry, French director, actor and
dramatist: "The little I know I owe to my ignorance." "You can pretend
to be serious; but you can't pretend to be witty."
(AP, 5/27/98)(AP, 2/27/99)
1886 May 2, Edouard Lockroy,
French Minister of Culture, announced plans for a tower for the 1889
Paris exhibition and invited proposals for the project. The winning
design was submitted by engineer Gustave Eiffel.
(ON, 7/03, p.9)
1886 May 19, Camille Saint-Saens'
3rd Symphony in C ("Organ"), premiered.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1886 Jun 24, Ngazidja (Grande
Comore) became a French protectorate.
(www.worldstatesmen.org/Comoros.html)
1886 Oct 28, The Statue of Liberty
on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, a gift from the people of France,
was dedicated by President Cleveland. It was designed by F.A.
Bartholdi. It was a monument to republicanism and to the amity between
the French and American nations. Later the poem "New Colossus" by Emma
Lazarus was placed at the base.
(WUD, 1994, p.1389)(WSJ, 7/26/96, p.A9)(THC,
4/10/97)(AP, 10/28/97)
1886 Nov 30, Folies Bergere
introduced an elaborate review featuring women in sensational costumes.
Years later, the Folies followed the Parisian taste for striptease and
gained a reputation for spectacular nudie shows. The Folies had
originated as a hall for operettas, pantomime, and even political
meetings.
(MC, 11/30/01)
1886 The last impressionist
exhibition was held in France.
(SFC, 10/22/96, p.E8)
1886 Jean-Leon Gerome painted "The
First Kiss of the Sun."
(WSJ, 2/5/99, p.W12)
1886 Pierre Loti, French naval
officer and author, wrote "An Iceland Fisherman."
(SFEC, 11/17/96, DB p.40)
1886 Emile Zola (1840-1902),
French author, wrote "The Masterpiece," the story of an artist in
pursuit of his vision. Zola described the horror felt by much of the
general public when presented with the work of the new Impressionists.
(WSJ, 4/29/06, p.P10)(Econ, 5/2/09, p.85)
1886 Rene Lalique, a pioneer of
Art Nouveau style, set up his own jewelry workshop in Paris, France. He
had already apprenticed under Louis Aucoq and worked for Cartier,
Boucheron and other established houses.
(SSFC, 2/4/07, p.C4)
1886-1888 Vincent Van Gogh made his Paris sojourn.
(WSJ, 3/14/00, p.A28)
1886-1963 Robert Schuman, French statesman: "When I
was a young man I vowed never to marry until I found the ideal woman.
Well, I found her -- but, alas, she was waiting for the perfect man."
(AP, 6/26/97)
1887 May 18, Emmanuel Chabrier’s
opera "Le Roi Malgré Luis" premiered in Paris, France.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1887 May 25, Gas lamp at Paris
Opera caught fire and 200 died.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1887 Jul 28, Marcel Duchamp
(d.1968), French artist, was born. He is known best for "Nude
Descending a Staircase," (1912) featured in the 1913 Armory Show in New
York. Arturo Schwarz published his complete works in 1969 with a new
edition in 1997. In 1996 Calvin Tompkins wrote "Duchamp: A Biography."
(V.D.-H.K.p.361)(WSJ, 12/18/96, p.A18)(HN, 7/28/01)
1887 Sep 16, Nadia Boulanger
(d.1979), conductor, was born in Paris, France. She became the 1st
woman to conduct Boston Symphony (1939).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadia_Boulanger)(www.glbtq.com/arts/boulanger_n.html)
1887 Nov 24, Victorien Sardou's
"La Tosca," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 11/24/01)
1887 Van Gogh painted "The
Courtesan." It was inspired by an 1820 work by the Japanese artist
Keisai Eisen who pictured an intricately coifed woman that later
appeared on the cover of a French magazine
(SFC, 11/16/98, p.E3)(WSJ, 12/1/98, p.A20)
1887 Claude Monet painted "The
Seine With the Pont de la Grande Jatte."
(SFC, 1/18/99, p.B2)
1887 Odilon Redon (1840-1916),
French painter and etcher, made his "Spider" lithograph.
(WUD, 1994, p.1203)(SFEM, 6/29/97, p.4)
1887 Sadi Carnot (1837-1994)
became president.
(WUD, 1994 p.225)
1887-1979 Nadia Boulanger, French music composer
teacher. "Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to
cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece." "Loving a child
doesn't mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out
the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult."
(AP, 3/26/97)(AP, 2/23/99)
1888 May 7, Edouard Lalo's opera
"Le roi d'Ys," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 5/7/02)
1888 Sep 12, Maurice Chevalier
(d.1972), actor, was born in Paris, France.
(HN, 9/12/00)(www.jimpoz.com)
1888 Oct-1888 Dec, Vincent van
Gogh shared a 4-room house in Arles, France, with Paul Gauguin. During
this period Van Gogh painted his portrait “l’Arlesienne, Madame Ginoux”
based on a drawing by Gauguin. In December Van Gogh cut off his ear
with a razor during a quarrel with painter Paul Gauguin, who then fled
to Paris. They never saw each other again. In 2006 martin Gayford
authored “The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin and Nine Turbulent Weeks
in Arles.”
(Econ, 4/29/06, p.89)
1888 Vincent van Gogh painted the
"Portrait of a Young Man in a Cap." The painting later went up for
auction for as much as $8 mil. Van Gogh also painted his "Boats at
Saintes-Maries," "The Bedroom," "Self Portrait as an Artist," "Postman
Joseph Roulin," and "Le Pont de Trinquetaille" in this year. In 1990
Robert Altman directed a film titled "Vincent and Theo" about Van Gogh
and his brother.
(WSJ, 4/27/95, p.C-18)(WSJ, 11/10/95, p. A-10)(SFC,
4/13/96, p.E3)(SFC, 1/14/98, p.D3)(SFEC, 10/25/98, Z1 p.12)(WSJ,
9/3/99, p.W10)(WSJ, 9/24/99, p.W9)
1888 Etienne Henri Dumaige
(b.1830), French sculptor, died. He worked in marble, plaster and
bronze. His subjects included Rabelais, Sappho, Perseus and other
classical figures.
(SSFC, 2/10/02, p.G5)
1889 Feb 4, The Panama Canal
project under Ferdinand de Lesseps (d.1894) went bankrupt. Over 5,000
French people died working on the project. In all over 25,000 people
died during 8 years of work, mostly from malaria and yellow fever.
(Econ, 2/24/07,
p.97)(www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/185.html)
1889 Mar 31, French engineer
Gustave Eiffel unfurled the French tricolor from atop the Eiffel Tower,
officially marking its completion. Constructed of 7,000 tons of iron
and steel, the 984-foot structure was designed by Alexandre Gustave
Eiffel for the Paris Exhibition of 1889, commemorating the centennial
of the French Revolution. The price for the Eiffel Tower was more than
$1 million, but fees for the year 1889 alone nearly recouped the cost.
Fifty-five years later, plans by Hitler to leave the tower and much of
Paris a smoking ruin were foiled by an unlikely hero. After the Paris
World Fair a church designed by Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was dismantled
and shipped to Santa Rosalia in Baja, Mexico.
(SFEC, 10/20/96, Par, p.23)(SFEC, 11/10/96,
p.T11)(HNPD, 3/31/99)(AP, 3/31/08)
1889 May 6, The Paris Exposition
formally opened, featuring the just-completed Eiffel Tower.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1889 May 18, Jules Massenet’s
opera "Esclarmonde" premiered in Paris, France.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1889 May 30, The brassiere was
invented in Paris. [see 1902]
(HN, 5/30/98)(WSJ, 2/3/99, p.A1)
1889 Jul 5, Jean Cocteau (d.1963),
French artist, writer and actor, was born. "History is a combination of
reality of History becomes a lie. The unreality of the fable becomes
the truth."
(AP, 11/16/00)(HN, 7/5/01)
1889 Jul 13, Vincent van Gogh
painted "Moonrise." The exact date was determined in 2003 by a
physicist using a computer and moon data from the painting.
(SFC, 7/16/03, p.D2)
1889 Oct 6, The Moulin Rouge in
Paris first opened its doors to the public.
(AP, 10/6/97)
1889 Oct 25, Abel Gance, French
film director (Napoleon), was born.
(HN, 10/25/00)(MC, 10/25/01)
1889 Van Gogh painted "The
Gardener," while a patient in St. Remy-de-Provence as well as “Starry
Night.” He also did "Wheatfield with a Reaper" and "Crab on Its Back"
in this year.
(SFC, 5/21/98, p.A14)(SFC, 1/18/99, p.B1)(WSJ,
8/14/01, p.A12)(WSJ, 10/18/08, p.W12)
1889 The 700-seat Elysee
Montmartre was built near Pigalle by Gustave Eiffel as a dance hall.
(WSJ, 4/8/99, p.A16)
1890 May, Vincent van Gogh arrived
in the French village of Auvers-sur-Oise, seeking a new life after a
year in a mental asylum. He embarked on an explosion of creativity,
producing more than 70 paintings within two months.
(AP, 6/12/07)
1890 cJun, Van Gogh painted his
Portrait of Dr. Gachet. He described the painting in detail to his
brother and sister. A 2nd portrait of Dr. Gachet, held by the Musee
d'Orsay is a variant of the first and is suspected to be unfinished by
Van Gogh and completed by someone else.
(WSJ, 2/16/99, p.A20)
1890 Jul 27, Artist Vincent van
Gogh shot himself in Auvers-sur-Oise, France. He survived the impact,
but not realizing that his injuries were to be fatal, he walked back to
the Ravoux Inn. He died 2 days later.
(Econ, 10/31/09,
p.95)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_van_Gogh)
1890 Jul 29, Artist Vincent van
Gogh died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Auvers-sur-Oise, France,
while painting "Wheatfield with Crows." He spent his last 70 days in
the care of Dr. Gachet and 78 paintings have been attributed to this
period. Earlier in the year he painted his "Garden at Auvers." In 2009
his letters were published in a 6-volume edition titled: Vincent Van
Gogh: The Letters.” Earlier editions had appeared in 1914 and 1958.
(WSJ, 2/8/96, p.A-12)(SFC, 5/26/96, Z1 p.2)(WSJ,
2/16/99, p.A20)(AP, 7/29/07)(Econ, 10/31/09, p.95)
1890 Aug 15, Jacques Ibert,
composer (Escales), was born in Paris, France.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1890 Nov 22, Charles de Gaulle
(d.1970), French general and president (1958-1969), was born in Lille,
France. "Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men
are great only if they are determined to be so."
(AP, 11/22/97)(AP, 11/22/98)(HN, 11/22/98)
1890 Cezanne began his still-life
painting "Still Life with a Ginger jar and Eggplants." He also created
his watercolor "Tree Study."
(WSJ, 6/4/97, p.A16)(WSJ, 2/6/00, p.A16)
1890 Claude Monet painted "Field
of Poppies."
(SFC, 7/11/01, p.D1)
1890 Henri Rousseau (1844-1910)
brought to the Salon of the Independents his full-length self-portrait
entitled: Myself, Portrait-Landscape.
(ON, 8/08, p.8)
1890 Paul Signac (1863-1935),
French neo-impressionist pointillist painter, began his work "Portrait
of Felix Feneon, Opus 217" (1890-1891).
(WSJ, 11/6/01, p.A24)
1890 French foreign legionnaires
massacred the amazonian army of Dahomey (Benin).
(Econ, 12/18/04, p.62)
1890-1892 Cezanne painted his oil on canvas: "Card
Players." It is part of the Dr. Barnes collection and on the Corbis CD.
[see 1972-1951, Barnes]
(Civil., Jul-Aug., '95, p.85)
1890-1912 In France a 151-km. private railroad was
constructed from Nice to Digne above the River Var. It was brought
under state control in 1933 and again privatized in 1972.
(Hem., 1/97, p.116)
1891 Jan 11, Georges-Eugene
Haussmann (b.1809), French town planner, died. He designed modern-day
Paris.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Haussmann)
1891 Jan 24, Max Ernst,
German-French surrealist painter, sculptor, was born. [see Apr 2]
(MC, 1/24/02)
1891 Jan 31, Jean-Louis-Ernest
Meissonier (b.1815), French academic painter, died. His painting
“Friedland, 1807,” begun in 1863, was completed in 1875.
(www.newadvent.org/cathen/10149a.htm)
1891 Mar 29, Georges-Pierre Seurat
(31), French painter (Pointillism), died.
(MC, 3/29/02)
1891 Apr 1, Paul Gauguin
(1848-1903), French painter, abandoned his wife and 5 children and left
Marseille for Tahiti.
(SFEC, 3/2/97, p.T12)(MC, 4/1/02)(SSFC, 5/11/03,
p.C7)
1891
Apr 1, The London-Paris telephone connection opened.
(OTD)
1891 Apr 2, Max Ernst, German
painter and sculptor, founder of surrealism, was born. [see Jan 24]
(HN, 4/2/98)
1891 May 11, Alexandre Becquerel
(b.1820), French physicist, died. In 1839, Becquerel observed the
photoelectric effect via an electrode in a conductive solution exposed
to light.
(www.patent-invent.com/electricity/inventors/alexandre_becquerel.html)
1891 May 15, Jules Massenet's
opera "Griselde," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1891 Aug 5, Henry Charles Litolff
(73), French pianist, composer, died.
(MC, 8/5/02)
1891 Sep 26, Charles Munch
(d.1968), Alsatian conductor (French Legion D'Honeur), was born in
Strasbourg.
(WUD, 1994 p.941)(MC, 9/26/01)
1891 Nov 10, J.N. Arthur Rimbaud
(b.1854), French poet and arms merchant (Saison en Enfer), died in
Marseille after doctors amputated his leg. In 1961 Enid Starkie
authored a biography. In 2000 Graham Robb authored "Rimbaud." Rimbaud
stopped writing poetry at age 21 and ended his last years in Africa as
an arms dealer. In 2008 Edmund White authored “Rimbaud: The Double Life
of a Rebel.”
(WUD, 1994 p.1234)(HN, 10/20/00)(SFC, 2/12/02,
p.D3)(Econ, 10/11/08, p.115)
1891 Claude Monet painted his
impressionist "Grainstacks: Snow Effect."
(SFC, 6/13/98, p.E1)
1891 Camille Pissarro painted "Two
Young Peasant Women." It was later analyzed as an attempt to marry
painting and anarchism.
(SFEC, 3/21/99, BR p.8)
1891 Emile Zola (1840-1902),
French novelist, authored “L’Argent” (Money), the story of a scheming
financier. It was first published a a newspaper serial.
(WSJ, 7/19/08, p.W6)
1891 In Paris Alexandre Darracq
started Gladiator Cycles as one of the dozens of bicycle companies that
saturated the market when the cycling craze boomed. The eccentric later
became famous for manufacturing automobiles. The Golden Age of cycling
reached its pinnacle in 1895, and that same year printer G. Massias
unveiled one of the great Parisian advertising posters. Only four of
these original posters exist today. The poster was later used by
California vintner Hahn Family Wines, a led to a 2009 ban on the wine
in Alabama.
(www.cyclesgladiator.com/AboutCyclesGladiator)
1891 Montaudon, a French champagne
maker, began operations. In 2008 it was acquired by LVMH, a luxury
goods conglomerate.
(Econ, 8/22/09,
p.59)(www.champagnemontaudon.com/uk/home_uk.html)
1892 Mar 10, Arthur Oscar
Honegger, composer (King David), was born in Le Havre, France.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1892 Sep 4, Darius Milhaud,
Aix-en-Provence France, composer, was born.
(MC, 9/4/01)
1892 Nov 8, In Paris, France,
anarchist Emile Henry placed a time bomb at the offices of the Carmaux
Mining Company that killed 5 policemen.
(www.marxists.org/reference/archive/henry/biography.htm)
1892 Nov 16, King Behanzin of
Dahomey (now Benin), led soldiers against the French.
(HN, 11/16/98)
1892 Camille Flammarion of France
explained the changing brightness of features on Mars to seasonal
changes of yellow vegetation and shallow seas.
(SFC, 11/29/96, p.A16)
1893 Feb 9, Suez Canal builder De
Lesseps and others were sentenced to prison for fraud.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1893 Mar 5, Hippolyte Taine (64),
French philosopher, historian, died.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1893 Jun, Pierre de Coubertin
convinced the General Assembly of the USFSA, an amateur sporting
society, to host a congress in France that would examine the issue of
amateurism in sports.
(ON, 8/07, p.3)
1893 Jul 7, Guy de Maupassant
(42), writer, died.
(MC, 7/7/02)
1893 Oct 18, Charles F. Gounod,
French composer (Faust, Romeo et Juliette), died at 75.
(MC, 10/18/01)
1893 Dec 9, Auguste Vaillant
(b.1861) threw a nail bomb from the second row of the public gallery in
the Palais Bourbon into the chamber: 20 deputies were slightly injured.
A symbolic gesture, meant to wound rather than kill, Vaillant was
condemned to death, and guillotined February 5 1894. The deputies use
the event to suppress the anarchist press.
(http://recollectionbooks.com/bleed/Encyclopedia/VaillantAuguste.htm)
1893 Claude Debussy completed his
only opera: "Pelleas et Melisande." It was based on a symbolist drama
by Maeterlinck.
(SFEC,11/9/97, DB p.13)
1893 Camille Pissarro painted
"Place du Havre, Paris." It was the first of four urban scenes of his
lifetime and was painted from his hotel window across from the St.
Lazare train station.
(DPCP 1984)
1893 Claude Monet created his
"water garden" at Giverney.
(WSJ, 7/1/99, p.A21)
1893 The first automobile license
plates were issued in Paris, France.
(HNQ, 7/18/00)
1893 French colonialists seized
control of Laos and tried to turn the Mekong River into a thoroughfare
linking their Indochina colonies.
(Econ, 1/3/04, p.29)
1894 Jan 9, Georges Feydeau's "Un
Fil a la Patte," ("Cat Among the Pigeons") premiered in Paris.
(MC, 1/9/02)
1894 Feb 12, In Paris, France,
anarchist Emile Henry hurled a bomb into the Cafe Terminus killing one
and injuring twenty.
(www.marxists.org/reference/archive/henry/biography.htm)
1894 Mar 16, The opera "Thais,"
composed by Jules Massenet, premiered in Paris. The libretto was by
Louis Gallet. It was based on a novel by Anatole France. The heroine is
a 4th century Egyptian courtesan.
(AP, 3/16/00)(WSJ, 11/9/00, p.A24)(WSJ, 12/19/02,
p.D10)
1894 May 21, In France anarchist
Emile Henry (22) went to the guillotine, his last words being: “Courage
camarades! Vive l'anarchie!”
(www.marxists.org/reference/archive/henry/biography.htm)
1894 Jun 16, In France 49 sporting
societies from 12 countries participated in a Congress in Paris where
delegates discussed amateurism in sports and the revival of the Greek
olympics. By the end of the congress on June 23, Pierre de Coubertin
won unanimous approval to revive the games.
(ON, 8/07, p.5)
1894 Jun 24, Sadi Carnot (b.1837),
French Pres. (1887-1894), was assassinated by an Italian anarchist.
(AH, 10/01, p.25)(NG, 11/04,
p.76)(http://tinyurl.com/78pc6)
1894 Jul 18, Charles Marie Leconte
de Lisle (born 1818), French poet, died.
(MC, 7/18/02)(WUD, 1994, p.817)
1894 Jul 22, The first automobile
race, organized by Le Petit Journal of Paris, took place on the 78-mile
route between Paris and Rouen, France.
(HN, 7/22/98)(Econ, 4/22/06, p.65)
1894 Sep 13, Alexis-Emmanuel
Chabrier, French composer (Espana, L'etoile), died at 53.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1894 Sep 15, Jean Renoir (d.1979),
French film director, was born. He was the son of Pierre Renoir
(1841-1919), the impressionist painter. His work included "Grand
Illusion" and "The Rules of the Game." "When a friend speaks to
me, whatever he says is interesting."
(HN, 9/15/00)(AHD, p.1215)(AP, 10/11/00)
1894 Oct 15, Captain Alfred
Dreyfus (1859-1935), a Jewish army officer in France, was arrested for
allegedly betraying military secrets to Germany.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Dreyfus)
1894 Dec 5, Georges Feydeau's
"L'Hotel du Libre Echange," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 12/5/01)
1894 Dec 22, French army officer
Alfred Dreyfus was fraudulently convicted of treason in a court-martial
that triggered worldwide charges of anti-Semitism. Dreyfus, a Jewish
artillery captain on the General Staff, was accused of passing secret
French military documents found in to the German embassy in Paris.
Dreyfus was eventually vindicated. [see 1906]
(WSJ, 4/22/96, p.A-20)(AP, 12/22/97)
1894 Paul Gauguin painted "Breton
Village in the Snow."
(SFC, 1/29/99, p.D6)
1894 Monet completed his painting
"Cathedral at Rouen (La Cour d’Albane)."
(SFC, 7/11/01, p.D1)
1894 Le Douanier Rousseau painted
"War, or the Ride of Discord."
(WSJ, 2/3/00, p.A24)
1894 French poet Pierre Louys
(1870-1925) authored “The Songs of Bilitis” (1894) a book of lesbian
love poetry.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Songs_of_Bilitis)
1894 In Mali Touareg nomads first
rebelled against the French and were bloodily suppressed.
(Econ, 1/20/07, p.58)
1895 Jan 5, French Capt. Alfred
Dreyfus, convicted of treason, was publicly stripped of his rank. He
was ultimately vindicated. Dreyfus, a Jew falsely accused of spying for
the Germans, was imprisoned alone on Devil’s Island until 1899.
(AP, 1/5/98)(SSFC, 12/15/02, p.L5)
1895 Feb 28, Marcel Pagnol, French
playwright, director (Marchands de Gloire), was born.
(MC, 2/28/02)
1895 Mar 2, Berthe Morisot
(b.1841) French impressionist painter, died of pneumonia.
(NMWA, 12/04, p.10)
1895 Apr 23, Russia, France, and
Germany forced Japan to return the Liaodong peninsula to China.
(HN, 4/23/99)
1895 Sep 28, Louis Pasteur
(b.1822), French chemist (Pasteurization), died at 72. In 1995 Gerald
Geison (d.2001) authored "The Private Science of Louis Pasteur.
(SFC, 7/13/01, p.D6)(MC, 9/28/01)
1895 Nov 27, Alfred Nobel,
explosives magnate, signed his last will and testament at the
Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, setting aside his estate to establish
the Nobel Prize after his death (see Dec 10, 1896). He named Ragnar
Sohlman (25), his favorite lab assistant, as his executor and Rudolf
Lilljequist as co-executor.
(http://nobelprize.org/alfred_nobel/will/will-full.html)(ON, 4/07, p.6)
c1895 Degas painted "Jockeys."
(SFEC, 6/21/98, BR p.8)
c1895 Elizabeth Jane Gardner,
American artist, painted “The Shepherd David” and exhibited it at the
Paris Salon of 1895. She was the 1st American woman to exhibit in the
Paris Salon.
(NMWA, 12/04, p.28)
1895 In Paris, France, the Castel
Beranger at 14 Rue la Fontaine, designed by Hector Guimard (1867-1942),
was completed. The Art Nouveau building was nicknamed “Castel Derange”
(Mad Castle).
(WSJ, 1/6/06, p.P16)
1895 In Senegal French
authorities, fearing his growing influence, exiled religious leader
Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba to their other colonial holdings in West Africa.
(AP, 4/22/03)
1896 Feb 8, Georges Feydeau's "Le
Dindon," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1896 Feb 11, Oscar Wilde's
"Salome," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/11/02)
1896 Feb 18, Andre Breton
(d.1966), French writer, founder and principal provocateur of the
surrealist movement, was born. An exhaustive biography was published in
1995 by Mark Polizzotti titled: Revolution of the Mind: The Life of
Andre Breton.
(WSJ, 8/1/95, p.A-9)(MC, 2/18/02)
1896 Feb, Georges Melies, a French
professional magician, purchased a film projector from Robert Paul, an
English camera maker. He then designed his own camera based on the
projector and began making movies in March.
(ON, 1/00, p.8)
1896 Apr 4, Tristan Tzara, [Samuel
Rosenfeld] French poet (Approximate Man), was born.
(MC, 4/4/02)
1896 Jun 16, Jean Peugeot, French
auto manufacturer, was born.
(MC, 6/16/02)
1896 Aug, The new chief of French
military intelligence, Lt Colonel Picquart, reported to his superiors
that he had found evidence to the effect that the real traitor in the
Dreyfus case was a Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. Picquart was
silenced by being transferred, in November 1896, to the southern desert
of Tunisia.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Dreyfus)
1896 Sep 10, Elsa Schiaparelli,
French fashion designer, was born.
(MC, 9/10/01)
1896 Oct 7, Nicholas and Alexandra
of Russia made a state visit with Pres. Felix Faure laid the
cornerstone for the Pont Alexandre III.
(WSJ, 6/26/96, p.A16)
1896 The Ida Tarbell biography of
Madame Roland, a republican sympathizer during the French Revolution,
was published.
(WSJ, 3/28/08, p.W5)
1896 A French cinematic society
held a screening in Turin, Italy.
(SFC, 2/11/06, p.E10)
1896 The Michelin brothers
introduced pneumatic tires in the Paris-to-Bordeaux automobile race.
They had come up with the removable tire, but the pneumatic tire was
invented in the US by John Dunlap.
(WSJ, 2/20/04, p.W5)
1896 Charles Field Haviland,
US-born porcelain manufacturer, died. In 1876 he took over the Alluaud
factory, one of the oldest porcelain factories in Limoges, France.
(SFC, 8/2/06, p.G7)
1897 Apr 19, 1st performance of
Debussy's "Pelleas et Melisande."
(MC, 4/19/02)
1897 Aug 28, Charles Boyer
(d.1978), French actor of film and stage, was born. Films included
"Algiers,'' “Fanny,” and "Gaslight.''
(RTH, 8/28/99)
1897 Sep 12, Irene Joliot-Curie,
French physicist (neutron, Nobel 1935), was born.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1897 Sep 18, Alberto Santos-Dumont
crashed his 1st dirigible into trees at the Zoological Gardens in Paris.
(ON, 3/03, p.10)
1897 Sep 20, Alberto Santos-Dumont
successfully flew his repaired motorized dirigible around the
Zoological Gardens in Paris.
(ON, 3/03, p.10)
1897 Dec 28, Edmond Rostand’s play
on Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655), French poet, was unveiled at the
Theatre de la Porte-Saint-Martin in Paris. Cyrano’s noted nose was an
invention of the poet Theophile Gautier introduced in an 1844 book.
(SFEC, 4/27/97, DB p.3)
1897 Alphonse Daudet (b.1840),
French novelist, died. In 2002 Julian Barnes translated writings from
his last 12 years, "In the Land of Pain," in which he conveyed his
thoughts on pain from his tertiary-stage syphilis.
(WUD, 1994 p.369)(WSJ, 1/24/03, p.W9)
1897 St. Theresa of Lisiex, known
to her followers as The Little Flower, died.
(SFC, 1/11/00, p.A15)
1897 Ragnar Sohlman, executor of
Alfred Nobel’s will, moved Nobel’s stock certificates and papers out of
France to Sweden, and thus beyond the jurisdiction of French courts.
(ON, 4/07, p.7)
1898 Jan 10, In France a
court-martial against Major Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy began behind
closed doors. The next day the defendant was found not guilty. Writer
Emile Zola followed this action 2 days later with a 4-thousand word
letter in support of Captain Dreyfus and accusing the French military
of a conspiracy in the case.
(ON, 2/09, p.6)
1898 Jan 13, Emile Zola's famous
defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, "J'accuse," was published in Paris.
The open letter to French President Felix Faure accused the French
judiciary of giving into pressure from the military to perpetuate a
cover-up in the Dreyfus treason case.
(AP, 1/13/98)(MC, 1/13/02)
1898 Feb 23, Writer Emile Zola was
imprisoned in France for his letter J’accuse in which he accused the
French government of anti-Semitism and the wrongful imprisonment of
army captain Alfred Dreyfus.
(HN, 2/23/01)
1898 Jul 4, The French liner "La
Bourgogne" collided with bark Cromartyshire, and 560 people died.
(Maggio, 98)
1898 Jul, Marie and Pierre Currie
published their discovery of polonium from radiation in pitchblende.
(ON, 3/00, p.1)
1898 Sep 13, 20,000 Paris
construction workers went on strike.
(MC, 9/13/01)
1898 Nov 11, Rene Clair, French
film director, was born.
(HN, 11/11/00)
1898 Dec 10, A treaty was signed
in Paris, officially ending the Spanish-American War.
(AP, 12/10/97)
1898 Dec 21, French scientists
Pierre and Marie Curie discovered 2 new elements that they later named
radium and polonium.
(AP,
12/21/97)(http://fi.edu/case_files/curie/pandr.html)
1898 Pissaro painted "Avenue de
L’Opéra, Place du Téâtre Français: Misty
Weather."
(WSJ, 1/7/02, p.A22)
1898 In France the Michelin Tire
company began using its tire-man logo. The first ad offered a toast
with broken nails and glass and told consumers that the Michelin tire
"drinks up obstacles."
(SFC, 3/19/98, p.A3)(SFEC, 3/22/98, p.T3)
1898-1900 Cezanne painted his sketchy red-ochre study
"In the Quarry of Bibemus" and his lush green and linear "Woodland
Scene."
(WSJ, 2/8/96, p.A-12)
1899 Feb 25, Paul Julius Reuter
(b.1816), founder of the British news agency that bears his name, died
in Nice, France. In 2003 Brian Mooney and Barry Simpson authored
"Breaking news: How the Wheels Came off at Reuters."
(AP, 2/25/99)(Econ, 11/1/03, p.81)
1899 Mar 27, The first
international radio transmission between England and France was
achieved by the Italian inventor G. Marconi.
(HN, 3/27/99)
1899 Apr 11, The Treaty of Paris
ending the Spanish-American War was declared in effect. Spain ceded
Puerto Rico to US. [see Apr 12, 1898]
(AP, 4/11/97)(MC, 4/11/02)
1899 May 25, Marie-Rosalie "Rosa"
Bonheur (68), French painter, died.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1899 Jun 3, A French court
overturned the 1894 guilty verdict against Capt. Dreyfus.
(ON, 2/09, p.7)
1899 Jun 20, Jean Moulin, French
Resistance fighter against Nazi Germany, was born.
(HN, 6/20/98)
1899 Sep 19, French Capt. Alfred
Dreyfus won a pardon after a retrial was forced by public opinion. He
was soon released from Devil's Island in French Guiana.
(PCh, 1992,
p.628)(www.spiritus-temporis.com/alfred-dreyfus/)
1899 Oct, An int'l. tribunal in
Paris ruled on a border dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana
(Guyana). Britain received most of the claim for the Essequibo region,
close to 111,000 square miles. Venezuela was represented by 2 US judges
and the chairman of the panel was Russian jurist Frederic de Martens.
Venezuela rejected this decision in the 1960s.
(SFC, 10/26/99, p.A12)(Econ, 9/29/07, p.44)
1899-1900 Claude Monet painted his first "Lily Pond"
series.
(WSJ, 7/1/99, p.A21)
1900 Jan 2, Gustave Charpentiers
opera "Louise" premiered in Paris. [see Feb 2]
(MC, 1/2/02)
1900 Feb 2, Gustave Charpentier's
opera "Louise" premiered in Paris. [see Jan 2]
(MC, 2/2/02)
1900 Feb 4, Jacques Prevert,
French poet, screenwriter, was born. His work included "The Visitors of
the Evening" and "The Children of Paradise."
(HN, 2/4/01)
1900 Mar 19, [Jean] Frederic
Joliot-Curie, French physicist (Nobel 1935), was born.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1900 Apr 14, Gates opened to the
World Fair, the Great Exposition in Paris. For a few months 210
temporary pavilions from different countries and architectural styles
lined the Seine. The Exposition Universale included the Exposition
Decennale, an art show of painting and sculpture from the previous
decade. The first working escalator (patented in 1859), was
manufactured by the Otis Elevator Company for the Paris Exposition.
During the expo Rudolf Diesel demonstrated an engine that ran on peanut
oil.
(http://tinyurl.com/hbldt)(WSJ, 2/16/00, p.A14)(HN,
8/9/00)(Econ, 5/14/05, p.71)
1900 May 14, The Olympic games
opened in Paris, held as part of the 1900 World's Fair.
(AP, 5/14/07)
1900 Jun 29, Antoine de
Saint-Exupery (d.1944), aviator and writer, was born. In 1970 Curtis
Cate published the biography: "Antoine de Saint-Exupery."
(WUD, 1994, p.1261)(SFEC, 6/15/97, p.A2)(SFEC,
5/28/00, p.A15)(HN, 6/29/01)
1900 Aug 22, Gabriel
Fauré’s opera "Promethee," premiered in Beziers.
(MC, 8/22/02)
1900 Sep 19, President Loubet of
France pardoned Jewish army captain Alfred Dreyfus, twice
court-martialed and wrongly convicted of spying for Germany.
(HN, 9/19/98)
1900 Nov
12, A World Fair, the Great Exposition in Paris, closed. 50 million
visitors attended the fair, which included Art Nouveau architecture,
furniture, jewelry, ceramics, posters, glass, textiles, and metalwork.
Jewelry by Rene Lalique was also exhibited at the fair. [see Apr 14]
(www.nga.gov/feature/nouveau/exhibit_fair.shtm)
1900 Nov 30, The French government
denounced the British government and declared sympathy for the Boers.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1900 Nov 30, Irish author Oscar
Wilde (b.1856) died in a Paris hotel room after saying of the room's
wallpaper: "One of us had to go." In 2000 "the Complete Letters of
Oscar Wilde," edited by Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson, was published
(V.D.-H.K.p.279)(AP, 11/30/97)(HN, 11/30/00)(SFC,
12/1/00, p.C12)
1900 Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947),
French artist, painted "Siesta."
(WSJ, 6/24/98,
p.A16)(www.abcgallery.com/B/bonnard/bonnardbio.html)
1900 Gustave Charpentier composed
his opera "Louise," about a Parisian seamstress.
(SFC, 9/15/99, p.B1)
1900 Louis Bachelier (1870-1946),
financial economist, wrote a dissertation in Paris, "Theorie de
la Spéculation." This and his subsequent work (esp. 1906, 1913)
anticipated much of what was to become standard fare in financial
theory: efficient market hypothesis, random walk of financial market
prices, Brownian motion and martingales. He was a student of French
mathematician Henri Poincare.
(WSJ, 7/16/03, p.D8)
1900-2000 This period in French history was covered
by British Historian Rod Kedward in his 2005 work: “La Vie en Bleu:
France and the French Since 1900.”
(Econ, 8/13/05, p.73)
1901 Feb 20, Rene Dubos, French-US
microbiologist who developed the first commercial antibiotic, was born
in France. He authored "Health & Disease."
(HN, 2/20/01)(MC, 2/20/02)
1901 Jan 23, First female intern
was accepted at a Paris hospital.
(HN, 1/23/99)
1901 Mar 19, Jo Mielziner, set
designer (Carousel, Death of a Salesman), was born in Paris.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1901 Jun 24, The 1st exhibition by
Pablo Picasso (19) opened in Paris.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1901 Jul 13, Santos-Dumont flew
his powered dirigible around the Eiffel Tower but failed to make it in
an allotted half hour time frame to win a 100,000 franc prize.
(ON, 3/03, p.11)
1901 Jul 31, Jean Dubuffet, French
sculptor and painter, was born.
(HN, 7/31/01)
1901 Aug 8, Santos-Dumont flew his
powered dirigible around the Eiffel Tower a 2nd time but sprang a leak
and caught suspension wires in his propeller blades.
(ON, 3/03, p.11)
1901 Aug 17, Henri Tomasi,
composer (Don Juan de Manara), was born in Marseilles, France.
(SC, 8/17/02)
1901 Sep 9, Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec, French painter, died at 36.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1901 Oct 19, Alberto Santos-Dumont
successfully circled Eiffel Tower in his Santos-Dumont No. 6 dirigible
within a half hour and won a 100,000 franc prize. An initial ruling
said that he failed by 40 seconds because the race wasn’t finished
until he touched ground. A 2nd vote granted him the win. This proved
the airship maneuverable.
(ON, 3/03, p.12)
1901 Oct 26, 1st use of "getaway
car" occurred after the hold-up of a shop in Paris.
(MC, 10/26/01)
1901 Andre Malraux (d.1976),
French author, was born. His work included "Man’s Fate" (La Condition
Humaine), "The Conquerors" (about a 1925 uprising in Canton), and "The
Royal Way." He worked as a journalist in Indochina against a corrupt
French colonial regime. In 1997 Curtis Cate wrote the biography "Andre
Malraux."
(WSJ, 5/5/97, p.A16)
1901 Henry Dunant (1828-1910),
Swiss businessman, won the 1st Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in
establishing the Int’l. Red Cross and the First Geneva Convention
covering treatment of those wounded in war. The prize was shared with
Frederic Passy (1822-1912), French economist, for his efforts toward
international peace.
(ON, 4/08,
p.12)(http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1901/passy-bio.html)
1902 Jan 4, The French offered to
sell their Nicaraguan Canal rights to the U.S.
(HN, 1/4/99)
1902 Jan 11, Maurice Durufle,
French organist, composer, was born.
(MC, 1/11/02)
1902 Jan 19, The magazine "L'Auto"
announced the new Tour de France.
(HN, 1/19/99)
1902 Jan 31, A French soccer team
played in England for the first time: Paris lost, 4-0, to Marlow FC.
(HC, 2003, p.64)
1902 Feb 9, Doctor Doyen of Paris,
performed a successful operation on Siamese twins from the Barnum and
Bailey Circus.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1902 Feb 19, Smallpox vaccination
became obligatory in France.
(HN, 2/19/98)
1902 Mar 20, France and Russia
acknowledged the Anglo-Japanese alliance, but asserted their right to
protect their interests in China and Korea.
(HN, 3/20/98)
1902 Apr 5, Maurice Ravel's
"Pavane pour une infante defunte," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 4/5/02)
1902 Apr 13, Philippe de
Rothschild, manager (Bordeaux Vineyard), was born in Paris.
(MC, 4/13/02)
1902 Apr 20, Radium was isolated
as a pure metal by Curie and André-Louis Debierne through the
electrolysis of a pure radium chloride solution. Pierre and Marie Curie
had discovered the element in 1898.
(AP, 4/20/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium)
1902 Apr 30, Debussy's opera
"Pelleas et Melisande" premiered in Paris.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1902 May 2, "A Trip To The Moon,"
the 1st science fiction, was film released. The French film "Le Voyage
Dans La Lune" (Voyage to the Moon) was a 14-minute silent film directed
by Georges Melies. It displayed early efforts in trick photography to
show a group of scientists traveling to the moon after being shot from
a giant cannon.
(WSJ, 3/19/98, p.R4)(MC, 5/2/02)
1902 Jun 28, Congress passed the
Spooner bill, authorizing a canal to be built across the isthmus of
Panama. The US purchased a concession to build Panama canal from French
for $40 million.
(HN, 6/28/98)(MC, 6/28/02)
1902 Aug 3, Ray Block, orchestra
leader (Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason), was born in France.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1902 Aug 8, Jean Y.Y. Tissot,
French painter, illustrator, died.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1902 Aug 24, Fernand Braudel
(d.1985), French historian, was born. He was one of the most important
historiographers of the 20th century: "History may be divided into
three movements: what moves rapidly, what moves slowly and what appears
not to move at all."
(AP, 9/5/97)(DT internet 11/28/97)
1902 Sep 28, Emile Zola (b.1840),
novelist (Nana, Germinal, J'accuse), died by asphyxiation in his Paris
apartment at age 62. In 1895 he began taking photographs and took some
7,000 pictures before his death.
(SFC, 12/29/00, p.C6)(MC, 9/28/01)
1902 Dec 22, Jacques-Philippe
Leclerc, French WW II hero (liberator of Paris), was born.
(MC, 12/22/01)
1902 Nov 24, The first Congress of
Professional Photographers convened in Paris.
(HN, 11/24/98)
1902 Auguste Escoffier
(1846-1935), French chef, authored “Le Guide Culinaire,” a collection
of some 5,000 recipes.
(Econ, 12/20/08,
p.141)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Escoffier)
1902 Charles R. Debevoise invented
the brassiere, but the market rejected it. No early bra did well until
elastic came out in 1913. [see May 30, 1889]
(SFEC, 5/23/99, Z1 p.10)
1903 Jan 19, The new bicycle race,
"Tour de France," began with 60 cyclists competing in a 2,500
kilometer, 19-day race.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R34)(MC, 1/19/02)
1903 Feb 21, Anais Nin (d.1977),
novelist (Winter of Artifice, House of Incense), was born in Paris:
"People do not live in the present always, at one with it. They live at
all kinds of and manners of distance from it, as difficult to measure
as the course of planets. Fears and traumas make their journeys
slanted, peripheral, uneven, evasive."
(AP, 9/7/97)(MC, 2/21/02)
1903 Mar 20, Henri Matisse
exhibited at the Salon des Independants.
(HN, 3/20/98)
1903 Apr 6, French Army
Nationalists were revealed for forging documents to guarantee a
conviction for Alfred Dreyfus, an officer accused of giving plans for
France's defense to Germany.
(HN, 4/6/99)
1903 May 8, Joseph Desire
Fernandel, comedian (Grand Chef), was born in Marseilles, France.
(MC, 5/8/02)
1903 May 8, Paul Gauguin (b.1848),
French born painter, died at his home on the Marquesas Islands. He was
buried at Atuona on Hiva Oa Island.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T6)(SSFC, 6/2/02, p.C9)
1903 Jun 7, Professor Curie
revealed the discovery of Polonium. [see 1898]
(HN, 6/7/98)
1903 Jun 17, Joseph-Marie Cassant
(b.1878), a French monk, died. He frequently meditated about Jesus on
the cross. In 2004 he was beatified by Pope John Paul VI.
(AP, 10/3/04)(www.vatican.va/news_services)
1903 Jun, Marie Curie received her
doctorate from the univ. of Paris.
(ON, 3/00, p.2)
1903 Jul 1, The 1st Tour de France
bicycle race began.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1903 Sep 13, Claudette Colbert
(d.1996), actress, was born in France as Lily Claudette
Chauchoin. She won an Oscar for "It Happened One Night."
(HN, 9/13/00)(www.concise.britannica.com)
1903 Nov 12, The Lebaudy brothers
of France set an air-travel distance record of 34 miles in a dirigible.
(HN, 11/12/98)
1903 Dec 10, The Nobel Prize for
physics was awarded to Pierre and Marie Curie and fellow physicist
Henri Becquerel for their work with radioactivity. Marie Curie, the
first woman to win a Nobel Prize, had coined the term radioactivity.
Working together after their marriage in 1895, the Curies made several
significant discoveries. They showed that the elements uranium and
thorium emitted radiation that Becquerel had detected in uranium and
had found to be similar to X-rays. They also found that radioactivity
caused particles to be electrically charged, and they discovered two
new elements, polonium and radium. Their daughter Irène, later a
famed scientist in her own right, was awarded the Nobel Prize in
chemistry for the synthesis of new radioactive elements.
(HNPD, 12/10/98)
1903 In France Count Hallez
d’Arros founded his Society of Heraldic Faience of Pierrefonds. The
society’s pottery used a “P” and “H” mark and became well-known for its
crystalline glazes.
(SFC, 10/19/05, p.G2)
1903-1908 Claude Monet worked on his 2nd series of
water lily paintings.
(WSJ, 7/1/99, p.A21)
1904 Jan 18, Henri-Georges Adam,
French etcher, painter, sculptor (Grand Nude), was born.
(MC, 1/18/02)
1904 Apr 16, Lily Pons, soprano
diva, was born in Draguignan, France.
(MC, 4/16/02)
1904 May 17, Jean Gabin, one of
France's most popular film actors, was born in Paris.
(AP, 5/17/04)
1904 May 17, Maurice Ravel's
"Sheherezad," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 5/17/02)
1904 Nov 21, Motorized omnibuses
replaced horse-drawn cars in Paris.
(HN, 11/21/98)
1904 Paul Cezanne, French painter,
declared that he wanted "to do Poussin over from nature," by which he
meant that he hoped to transport Poussin’s ancient gods and lucid
geometries into a breezy impressionist outdoors. Cezanne began his
painting "Nature Morte: Rideau a Fleur et Fruits," (Still Life with
Flowered Curtain and Fruit). In 1997 it sold for $50 million to Ronald
Lauder, chairman of Estee Lauder Int’l.
(WSJ, 2/26/96, p.A-10)(WSJ, 1/31/97, p.B1)
1904 Matisse painted his
pointillist "Luxe, Calme et Volupte."
(WSJ, 12/8/99, p.A20)
1904 Claude Monet painted "Water
Lilies." The work was acquired by art-dealer Paul Rosenberg and then
stolen by the Nazis and put into the collection of Foreign Minister
Joachim von Ribbentrop. After the war it reverted to the French
government. In 1998 the Rosenberg family again laid claim.
(SFC, 12/1/98, p.A2)
1904 The film "The Impossible
Journey" was made by Georges Melies.
(ON, 1/00, p.9)
1905 Jan 21, Christian Dior,
fashion designer (long-skirted look), was born in Normandy, France.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1905 Feb 1, Germany contested
French rule in Morocco.
(HN, 2/1/99)
1905 Mar 11, The Parisian subway
was officially inaugurated.
(HN, 3/11/98)
1905 Mar 24, Jules Verne (b.1828),
French sci-fi author (Around the World in 80 Days), died in Amiens.
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/verne.htm)
1905 Apr 1, Berlin and Paris were
linked by telephone.
(HN, 4/1/98)
1905 Jun 21, Jean-Paul Sartre
(d.1980), French philosopher and existentialist, was born. He won the
Nobel Prize in 1964 but declined it. His works include "The Road to
Freedom."
(HN, 6/21/98)(AP, 2/15/00)
1905 Jul 2, Jean-Rene Lacoste,
tennis champ, alligator shirt designer, was born in France.
(SC, 7/2/02)
1905 Sep 14, Pierre de Brazza
(b.1852), Franco-Italian explorer, died and was buried in Algeria. He
was born in Italy and later naturalized French. Brazza single-handedly
opened up for France entry along the right bank of the Congo that
eventually led to French colonies in West Africa. In 2006 his remains
were exhumed and moved to a mausoleum in Brazzaville, capital of the
Republic of Congo.
(Econ, 10/7/06,
p.6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Savorgnan_de_Brazza)
1905 Dec 9, The French Assembly
National voted for separation of church and state.
(http://tinyurl.com/yyvx2d)(WSJ, 4/25/03, W13)
1905 The Gallery VII Salon
d’Automne in France featured the Fauves. It featured works by Matisse,
the acknowledged leader, along with Andre Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck
and others. Louis Vauxelles described 2 classic marble sculptures as
"Donatello chez les fauves" (D. among the wild beasts).
(WSJ, 12/8/99, p.A20)
1905 Matisse painted his "Femme au
Chapeau," (Woman with the Hat). It later became part of the Elise S.
Haas collection bequeathed to the San Francisco MOMA.
(SF E&C, 1/15/1995, SFE Mag. p.21)
1906 Mar 3, Vuia I aircraft, built
by Romanian Traja Vuia, was tested in France.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1906 Mar 10, 1st performance of
Maurice Ravel's "Sonatine."
(MC, 3/10/02)
1906 Mar 10, A coal dust explosion
killed 1,060 at Courrieres, France.
(MC, 3/10/02)
1906 Mar 25, Jean Sablon, French
crooner, was born.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1906 Mar, Matisse first exhibited
his 6x8 foot untraditional, pastoral canvas “Le Bonheur de vivre” at
the Salon des Independants in Paris. It was purchased from the salon by
Leo and Gertrude Stein.
(WSJ, 12/2/06, p.P12)
1906 Apr 13, Samuel Beckett
(d.1989), Irish (French) playwright, Nobel Prize winner in 1969,
(Waiting for Godot), was born. He settled in France and wrote in French
and then translated to English. Sometimes he reversed the process. His
work included "Act Without Words" (1956), "Happy Days" (1960-61),
"Rough for Theater II" (1976), "Catastrophe" (1982) and "What’s There"
(1983). Also the prose trilogy "Molloy," "Malone Dies" and "The
Unnamable." In 1996 James Knowlson wrote his study of Beckett: "Damned
to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett."
(V.D.-H.K.p.369)(SFEC, 10/27/96, BR p.5)(HN, 4/13/98)
1906 Apr 17, In France the wife of
a miner who had refused to strike was attacked by 150 women in her home
in the Pas de Calais district.
(SFC, 4/18/06, p.A15)
1906 Apr 19, Pierre Curie, French
physicist, chemist (Nobel 1903), died. Curie, was hit by a truck
and killed as he crossed a street in Paris.
(ON, 3/00, p.2)(MC, 4/19/02)
1906 Jun 24, Pierre Fournier,
cellist (Paris Conservatoire), was born in Paris, France.
(MC, 6/24/02)
1906 Jun 26, Ferenc Szisz won the
first French Grand Prix. Szisz won the race in a 13 liter, 90
horsepower Renault. The car was not particularly powerful
compared to other cars in the race, but it did have the important
advantage of removable tire-carrying rims. The removable rims meant
tire changes took a speedy four minutes compared to the regular 15
minutes required with fixed rim tires. Szisz finished a little over a
half hour ahead of the second-place car.
(HNQ, 7/25/00)(AHDD, p.26)
1906 Jul 12, French Captain Alfred
Dreyfus was found innocent in France of his earlier court-martial for
spying for Germany. Dreyfus had served over 4 years on Devil’s Island
before a top French court rehabilitated his name in what came to be
called the Dreyfus Affair.
(PC, 1992, p.664)(SFC, 7/13/06, p.A16)
1906 Aug 11, In France, Eugene
Lauste received the first patent for a talking film.
(HN, 8/10/98)
1906 Oct 22, Paul Cezanne
(b.1839), French post-impressionist painter, died in Aix-en-Provence.
(AP, 10/22/06)
1906 Oct 31, Louise Talma,
composer (Summer Sounds), was born in Arcachon, France.
(MC, 10/31/01)
1906 Claude Monet painted "Water
Lilies." His last great series was devoted to the water lilies of the
pond in his Japanese garden in Giverney. This series of paintings
lasted to 1916 and became increasingly abstract.
(DPCP 1984)
1906 Auguste Rodin began his
sculpture "Large Left Clenched Hand With Figure."
(WSJ, 4/1/97, p.A16)
1906 Maurice de Vlaminck painted
"The Seine at Chatou." In 2002 it was valued at an estimated $4.4-5.8
million.
(WSJ, 3/15/02, p.W14)
1906 The French film "Madame Has
Her Cravings" was a comedy by Guy-Blache, an early female filmmaker.
(SFC, 5/26/98, p.D5)
1907 Mar 2, Georges Feydeaus' "La
Puce à l'Oreille" premiered in Paris, France.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1907 May 10, Paul Dukas' opera
"Ariane et Barbe Bleue," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1907 Jun 10, In China 11 men in
five cars set out from the French embassy in Beijing on a race to
Paris. Prince Scipione Borghese of Italy was the first to arrive in the
French capital two months later.
(AP, 6/10/07)
1907 Jun, Pablo Picasso stumbled
on the African and Oceanic collection at the Ethnographic Museum of the
Trocadero in Paris, as he was working on "Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon."
The experience from that point on put an African influence on much of
his work.
(WSJ, 11/13/96, p.A20)(Econ, 2/11/06, p.81)
1907 Aug 31, England, Russia and
France formed their Triple Entente.
(MC, 8/31/01)
1907 Oct 13, Yves Allégret,
French film director, was born. His work included "Dédée
d'Anvers" and "Une si jolie petite plage."
(HN, 10/13/00)
1907 Nov 13, The 1st helicopter
was piloted by French engineer Paul Cornu (1881-1944). The copter
hovered a foot off the ground for 20 seconds [see Apr 12, 1905].
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Cornu)(SSFC,
12/14/03, p.D2)
1907 Nov 20, Henri-Georges
Clouzot, French director (Le salaire de la peur), was born.
(MC, 11/20/01)
1907 Nov 30, Jacques Barzun,
French author, was born. Hi books included “The House of Intellect”
(1959).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Barzun)
1907 Dec 2, Spain and France
agreed to enforce Moroccan measures adopted in 1906.
(HN, 12/2/98)
1907 In France the bowling game of
petanque or boule assumed its current form after possible origins in
ancient Greece or Egypt. Similar to bocce ball it is played on a dirt
court with baseball sized steel balls. In 1998 it was seeking Olympic
recognition. The French version was born near Marseille as a sport for
the masses. In 1959 France held the 1st annual petanque world
championship.
(WSJ, 1/5/98, p.20)(WSJ, 8/30/07, p.A7)
1907 In France the physicist
Georges Claude discovered that high voltage electricity shot through
certain gases radiated color. He patented a neon tube in 1909.
(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A20)(SFEC, 5/23/99, p.B7)(SFEC,
8/13/00, p.T6)
1907 Explorations under Louis
Deleporte and the French School of the Far East began at the ancient
city of Angkor. Found artifacts were shared between France and Cambodia.
(AM, May/Jun 97 p.60)(SFC, 2/4/04, p.D10)
1908 Jan 9, French philosopher and
feminist Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris.
(AP, 1/9/08)
1908 Jan 12, A wireless message
was sent long-distance for the first time from the Eiffel Tower in
Paris.
(HN, 1/12/99)
1908 Feb 29, The artist known as
Balthus was born in Paris.
(AP, 2/29/08)
1908 Mar 15, 1st performance of
Maurice Ravel's "Rhapsodie Espagnole."
(MC, 3/15/02)
1908 Mar 21, Frenchman Henri
Farman carried a passenger in a bi-plane for the first time.
(HN, 3/21/98)
1908 May 5, Jacques Massu, French
general (Algeria), was born.
(MC, 5/5/02)
1908 Jul 30, An around the world
automobile race ended in Paris. The American Thomas Speedway Flyer, was
declared the winner over teams from Germany and Italy. In 1966 driver
George Schuster authored “The Longest Auto Race.” The restored Flyer
was later displayed at the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada.
(ON, 4/08, p.10)(AP, 7/30/08)
1908 Aug 18, Edgar Faure (d.1988),
thriller writer, PM of France (1952, 52-56), was born.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1908 Aug 22, Henri
Cartier-Bresson, photographer, was born in Chanteloup, France.
(HN, 8/22/00)(MC, 8/22/02)
1908 Nov 8, Victorien Sardou (77),
French opera author (Madame Sans-Gene), died.
(MC, 11/8/01)
1908 Nov 28, Claude Levi-Strauss,
French anthropologist, was born.
(HN, 11/28/98)
1908 Dec 10, Oliver Messian,
French composer, was born. His work included "Quartet for the End of
Time."
(HN, 12/10/00)
1908 Robert Schreiber founded Les
Echos as a marketing brochure. It grew to become France's premier
financial and corporate newspaper.
(www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Groupe-Les-Echos-Company-History.html)
1908 Rene Lalique was making glass
perfume bottles for Francois Coty.
(SFC, 3/26/97, z1 p.7)
1909 Feb 3, Simone Weil (d.1943),
French philosopher, member of the French resistance in WWII, was born.
"All sins are attempts to fill voids." "Man alone can enslave man."
(HN, 2/3/01)(AP, 12/10/97)(AP, 8/23/98)
1909 Feb 9, France agreed to
recognize German economic interests in Morocco in exchange for
political supremacy.
(HN, 2/9/97)
1909 Feb 20, F.T. Marinetti
(1876-1944), Italian poet, published the 1st Futurist Manifesto in the
Paris newspaper Le Figaro. It included the statement: “We want to
glorify war - the only cure for the world…”
(SFEC, 1/3/99, DB p.27)(WSJ, 10/23/08,
p.A15)(www.unknown.nu/futurism/)
1909 Mar 2, Great Britain, France,
Germany and Italy asked Serbia to set no territorial demands.
(SC, 3/2/02)
1909 Apr 18, Joan of Arc was
declared a saint.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1909 Jul 25, French aviator Louis
Bleriot (1872-1936) made the first crossing of the English Channel from
Calais to the grounds of Dover Castle in a powered aircraft, winning a
£1,000 prize offered by the London Daily Mail. Piloting his Type
XI monoplane at an average of 39 miles per hour, Blériot made
the trip of 23.2 miles in just under 36 minutes.
(AP, 7/25/97)(HNPD, 7/25/98)(ON, 6/07, p.9)
1909 Aug 29, World’s 1st air race
was held in Rheims France. American Glenn Curtiss won.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1909 Oct 9, Jacques Tati, French
actor and director, was born.
(HN, 10/9/00)
1909 Jean Cocteau (19) published
his 1st book of poems: "La Lampe d'Aladin."
(SFC, 10/6/03, p.D8)
1909 The Ballet Russes of Serge
Diaghilev exploded onto the stage of the Chatelet in Paris.
(SFC, 12/27/99, p.E3)
1909 Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel
opened her 1st shop, a millinery, in Paris.
(WSJ, 10/13/03, p.A1)
1909 In France the physicist
Georges Claude perfected the neon tube and patented a long lasting
electrode that he developed for it. 2 English chemists had discovered
neon in 1898.
(G&M, 7/31/97, p.A20)(SFEC, 5/23/99, p.B7)
1910 Jan 4, Leon Walrus (b.1834),
French economist, died. In 1874 he wrote and published the first
edition of his magnum opus, the “Elements of Pure Economics.”
(http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/walras.htm)(http://tinyurl.com/pdw34)
1910 Jan 7, Alain JG de
Rothschild, banker and baron, was born in France.
(MC, 1/7/02)
1910 Feb 7, Edmond Rostand's
"Chanticleer," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 2/7/02)
1910 Mar 8, Baroness de Laroche
became the first women to obtain a pilot's license in France.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1910 Mar 28, The first seaplane
took off from water at Martinques, France.
(HN, 3/28/98)
1910 Jun 11, Jacques Cousteau
(d.1997), pioneer sea explorer, was born in Saint-Andre-de-Cubzac,
France. He invented the aqualung and wrote "The Living Sea."
(SFC, 6/26/97, p.A7)(HN, 6/11/99)
1910 Jun 23, Jean Anouilh, French
playwright, was born.
(HN, 6/23/01)
1910 Sep 2, Henri "le Douanier"
Rousseau (b.1844), French customs officer and painter, died in Paris.
He had recently completed his masterpiece “The Dream.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Rousseau)(WSJ,
9/13/06, p.D10)
1910 Sep 5, Marie Curie
demonstrated the transformation of radium ore to metal at the Academy
of Sciences in France.
(HN, 9/5/98)
1910 Sep 8, Jean-Louis Barrault,
director and actor (Les Enfants du Paradis), was born in Vesinet,
France.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1910 Sep 27, 1st test flight of a
twin-engined airplane was made in France.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1910 Oct 18, M. Baudry was the
first to fly a dirigible across the English Channel--from La
Motte-Breil to Wormwood Scrubbs.
(HN, 10/18/98)
1910 Dec 3, Neon lights were 1st
publicly seen at the Paris Auto Show.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1910 Dec 19, Jean Genet, criminal,
novelist, dramatist (The Blacks), was born in Paris, France. In 1993
Edmund White published "Jean Genet: A Life."
(WUD, 1994, p.590)(SFEC, 10/5/97, Z1 p.3)(MC,
12/19/01)
1910 Matisse painted "La Danse."
"The Dance II" later ended up at the Hermitage.
(WSJ, 2/16/99, p.A20)(WSJ, 12/8/99, p.A20)
1910 Coco Chanel (1883-1971),
French fashion designer, moved to Rue Cambon, Paris.
(WSJ, 10/13/03, p.B1)
1910 Paris was menaced by a great
flood. "The streets were like rivers, the squares, like great lakes."
Severe flooding ravaged Monet's pond at Giverny.
(SFEC, 8/25/96, BR p.5)(SFEC, 9/21/97, BR p.4)(WSJ,
7/1/99, p.A21)
1910 Le Divan bookstore was
founded in the Left Bank of Paris. It was put up for sale in 1996 by
its owners, the Gallimard publishing house.
(SFEC, 10/20/96, T9)
1910 In France a hairdresser
devised the permanent wave for hair.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R14)
1910 French Equatorial Africa was
a former administrative grouping of four French territories in west
central Africa. It was first formed by the federation of 3 French
imperial colonies: Gabon, Middle Congo, and Ubangi-Shari-Chad. It
comprised a total area of 969,112 square miles (2,500,000 sq km). Chad
was separated from Ubangi-Shari in 1920 to form a fourth colony.
(www.discoverfrance.net)
1911 Apr 12, Pierre Prier
completed the first non-stop London-Paris flight in three hours and 56
minutes.
(HN, 4/12/99)
1911 Jul 5, George Pompidou, Prime
Minister of France, 1968, was born.
(HN, 7/5/98)
1911 Aug 21, Leonardo da Vinci’s
“Mona Lisa” was stolen from the Louvre Museum. It had hung there for
more than 100 years. Vincenzo Perugia, a former Louvre employee, stole
the painting. It turned up in Italy two years later. In 2009 R.A.
Scotti authored “Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa.”
(AP, 8/21/06)(SSFC, 5/10/09, Books p.H5)
1911 Apr 23, Simone Simon, French
actress (All Money Can Buy, Ladies in Love), was born.
(MC, 4/23/02)
1911 May 19, Maurice Ravel’s opera
"L'Heure Espagnole," premiered in Paris.
(MC, 5/19/02)
1911 Aug 21, Leonardo da Vinci’s
“Mona Lisa” was stolen from the Louvre Museum. The painting turned up
in Italy two years later.
(AP, 8/21/06)
1911 Aug 22, It was announced in
Paris that Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa had been stolen from the
Louvre Museum the night before. It had hung there for more than 100
years. Vincenzo Perugia stole the painting, which was recovered in
Italy in 1913.
(AP, 8/22/97)(HN, 8/22/98)
1911 Nov 18, Alfred Binet, French
child psychologist, died.
(MC, 11/18/01)
1911 Debussy composed "Trois
Ballades de Francois Villon" set to poems by the poet.
(SFEC, 3/28/99, DB p.9)
1911 The bar in Paris at 5 Rue
Dannou, later named Harry’s, was founded.
(SFC, 3/28/98, p.B12)
1912 Mar 4, The French council of
war unanimously voted a mandatory three-year military service.
(HN, 3/4/98)
1912 Mar 7, French aviator, Heri
Seimet flew non-stop from London to Paris in three hours.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1912 Apr 21, Marcel Camus, French
film director (Black Orpheus), was born.
(HN, 4/21/01)
1912 Jul 25, The Comoros were
proclaimed to be French colonies.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1912 Aug 13, Jules E.F. Massenet
(70), French opera composer (Werther, Manon), died.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1912 Apr 29, Henri Poincare
(d.1912), French mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, died. He
investigated the idea of space and led to the notion that space is too
complex for mathematics. In 2002 Russian mathematician Grigory Perelman
solved the 1904 Poincare Conjecture. In 2007 Donal O’Shea authored “The
Poincare Conjecture.”
(V.D.-H.K.p.272)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9)
1912 Sep 7, French aviator Roland
Garros set an altitude record of 13,200 feet.
(HN, 9/7/98)
1912 Sep 10, In France J. Vedrines
became the first pilot to break 100 m.p.h. barrier.
(HN, 9/10/98)
1912 Nov 3, The first all metal
plane was flown near Issy, France, by pilots Ponche and Prinard.
(HN, 11/3/98)
1912 Nov 24, Austria denounced
Serbian gains in the Balkans; Russia and France backed Serbia while
Italy and Germany backed Austria.
(HN, 11/24/98)
1912 The Archbishop of Paris
stated that "Christians must not tango."
(SFEC,11/30/97, Z1 p.3)
1912 Helena Rubinstein, following
her success in Australia and London opened a beauty salon in Paris.
(SFEM, 8/23/98, p.29)
1912 The 1st neon sign illuminated
the Palais Coiffeur, a Parisian beauty shop.
(SFEC, 8/13/00, p.T6)
1912-1956 The French ruled Morocco.
(SFC, 3/16/01, p.A18)
1913 Jan 21, Aristide Briand
formed a French government.
(MC, 1/21/02)
1913 Feb 18, Marcel Duchamp’s
painting "Nude Descending a Staircase" was displayed at the Armory Show
in NYC.
(MC, 2/18/02)
1913 Apr 14, Jean Fournet, French
conductor, was born.
(MC, 4/14/02)
1913 May 29, The premier of the
ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) by Igor Stravinsky
and Vaslav Nijinsky in Paris caused rioting in the theater. The
orchestra was led by Pierre Monteux and décor was by Nikolai
Roerich.
(SFEC, 8/10/97, p.B9)(HN, 5/29/01)(WSJ, 12/8/04,
p.D12)
1913 Aug 20, 700 feet above Buc,
France, parachutist Adolphe Pegond becomes the first person to jump
from an airplane and land safely.
(HN, 8/20/00)
1913 Sep 21, The 1st aerobatic
maneuver, a sustained inverted flight, was performed in France.
(MC, 9/21/01)
1913 Nov 7, Albert Camus (d.1960),
French philosopher, novelist, and dramatist best known for his book
"The Stranger" (1942) was born on an Algerian farm.
(WSJ, 12/12/97, p.A16)(HN, 11/7/98)
1913 Nov 28, Heavyweight Jack
Johnson KO’d Andre Spaul in Paris.
(DT internet 11/28/97)
1913 The avant-garde of pre-WW I
Paris was chronicled in 1958 by Roger Shattuck’s "The Banquet Years."
(WSJ, 9/18/98, p.W8)
1913 Camille Flammarion,
astronomer, proposed a sundial for the Place de la Concorde. [see June
21, 1999]
(WSJ, 10/26/99, p.A24)
1913-1927 Marcel Proust (1871-1922), French novelist
wrote his 7-volume "Remembrance of Things Past." In 1998 it was turned
into a comic book series.
(WSJ, 2/11/06, p.P18)
1914 Mar 4, Doctor Fillatre of
Paris, France successfully separated Siamese twins.
(HN, 3/4/98)
1914 Mar 25, Frederic Mistral,
French poet (Nobel-1904), died.
(MC, 3/25/02)
1914 Aug 1, France and Germany
mobilized.
(MC, 8/1/02)
1914 Aug 2, German press falsely
reported that French bombed Nuremberg.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1914 Aug 3, Germany invaded
Belgium and declared war on France at the onset of World War I. The
German plan for victory in France was known as the Schlieffen Plan, and
was based on a quick strike and the capture of Paris.
(HN, 8/3/98)(AP, 8/3/08)(ON, 8/08, p.5)
1914 Aug 15, Lt. Charles de Gaulle
(24) was injured during a German assault at Dinant.
(MC, 8/15/02)
1914 Aug 19, The British
Expeditionary Force (BEF) landed in France.
(HN, 8/19/98)
1914 Aug 20, Battle at Morhange:
German troops chased French, killing 1000s.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1914 Aug 20-24, Battle of
Boundaries: Lorraine, Ardennen, Sambre & Meuse, Mons.
(MC, 8/20/02)
1914 Aug 22, Some 27,000 soldiers
died in the bloodiest battle of French history.
(SFEC, 9/28/97, Z1 p.2)
1914 Aug 25, German troops marched
into France and pushed the French army to the Sedan.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1914 Aug 26, The French government
appointed Gen. Joseph Simon Gallieni (65) as military governor of
Paris. He had been called out of retirement at the onset of war to
serve in the Ministry of War in Paris.
(ON, 8/08, p.4)
1914 Aug 30, The 1st German plane
bombed Paris and 2 people were killed.
(SFC, 8/24/96, p.E3)(MC, 8/30/01)
1914 Aug, The British Flying Corps
(RFC) was sent to France to support the British Expeditionary Corps.
(AH, 1/97)
1914 Aug, Alberto Santos-Dumont
(1873-1932), Brazilian aviation pioneer, burned his aeronautical papers
after French neighbors labeled him a German spy.
(SSFC, 6/28/03, p.M1)
1914 Sep 3, The French capital was
moved from Paris to Bordeaux as the Battle of the Marne began. The
British expeditionary army under general Lanrezacs army attacked the
Marne. French troops vacated Reims.
(HN, 9/3/98)(MC, 9/3/01)
1914 Sep 4, General von Moltke
ceased German advance in France.
(MC, 9/4/01)
1914 Sep 5, The First Battle of
the Marne began during World War I. The German First Army was led by
Gen. Alexander von Kluck.
(AP, 9/5/97)(WSJ, 12/31/99, p.A10)
1914 Sep 5, Charles Peguy
(d.1914), French poet and writer, died. "It is impossible to write
ancient history because we lack source materials, and impossible to
write modern history because we have far too many."
(AP,
7/28/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_P%C3%A9guy)
1914 Sep 6, In the Battle of Marne
German forces bypassed Paris to chase retreating allied forces. French
Gen. Gallieni orchestrated an attack using the British Expeditionary
Force along with the French 3rd, 5th and 6th armies.
(ON, 8/08, p.5)
1914 Sep 7, In the Battle of Marne
French Gen. Gallieni commandeered some 600 hundred Paris taxicabs to
deliver overnight 6,000 men of the 3rd army to reinforce the 6th Army
at the Battle of the Marne, which allowed the French army to hold.
(ON, 8/08, p.5)
1914 Sep 9, In the Battle of Marne
the German advance stalled and a retreat began back to the Aisne River.
(ON, 8/08, p.5)
1914 Sep 12, The First Battle of
the Marne ended in an Allied victory against Germany. The German
advance into France was stopped. 20th century history turned on this
pivotal event.
(WSJ, 12/31/99, p.A10)(AP, 9/12/06)
1914 Sep 15, The Battle of Aisne
began between Germans and French during WW I.
(MC, 9/15/01)
1914 Sep 18, Battle of Aisne ended
with Germans beating the French during WW I.
(MC, 9/18/01)
1914 Sep 24, In the
Alsace-Lorraine area between France and Germany, the German Army
captured St. Mihiel.
(HN, 9/24/98)
1914 Oct 12, The 1st battle at
Ypres, France, began.
(MC, 10/12/01)
1914 Oct 31, Great Britain and
France declared war on Turkey. [see Nov 5]
(MC, 10/31/01)
1914 Nov 5, The French and British
declared war on Turkey. [see Oct 31]
(HN, 11/5/98)
c1914 Edith Wharton authored
"French Ways and Their Meaning." She argue in the book for American
Intervention in WW I.
(SFEM, 3/12/00, p.50)
1914 The bones of a Neanderthal
baby were found in southwestern France and shipped to Paris for
analysis. The 40,000 year-old "Le Moustier 2" bones were put away and
re-discovered in 1996.
(SFC, 9/5/02, p.A16)
1915 Jan 14, The French abandoned
five miles of trenches to the Germans near Soissons.
(HN, 1/14/99)
1915 Jan 31, Thomas Merton
(d.1968), French Trappist monk, poet, essayist , was born. "A happiness
that is sought for ourselves alone can never be found; for a happiness
that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy."
(AP, 4/17/01)(MC, 1/31/02)
1915 Feb 16, Emil Waldteufel,
[Charles Levy], French composer (Estudiantina), died.
(MC, 2/16/02)
1915 Feb 19, British and French
warships began their attacks on the Turkish forts at the mouth of the
Dardenelles, in an abortive expedition to force the straits of
Gallipoli.
(HN, 2/19/99)
1915 Mar 13, The Germans repelled
a British Expeditionary Force attack at the battle of Neuve Chapelle in
France.
(HN, 3/13/99)
1915 Mar 20, The French called off
the Champagne offensive on the Western Front.
(HN, 3/20/98)
1915 Mar 22, A German Zeppelin
made a night raid on Paris railway stations.
(HN, 3/22/97)
1915 Apr 1, Roland Garros
(d.1918), French aviator, shot down 2 German aviators over Belgium,
with bullets shot through his propellers. Corp. August Spachholz and
Lt. Walter Grosskopf became the 1st to be killed by an enemy pilot
flying alone.
(ON, 10/02, p.8)
1915 Apr 22, Germans made the
first use of poison gas in World War I at the Second Battle Ypres.
Chlorine gas was used along 4 miles of the French line at Ypres.
(NH, 10/98, p.18)(HN, 4/22/99)
1915 May 9, German and French
forces fought the Battle of Artois.
(HN, 5/9/98)
1915 Jun 20, There was a German
offensive in Argonne.
(MC, 6/20/02)
1915 Jun 21, Germany used poison
gas for the first time in warfare in the Argonne Forest.
(HN, 6/21/98)
1915 Jun 30, The Second Battle
Artois ended as the French failed to take Vimy Ridge.
(HN, 6/30/98)
1915 Jul 2, Porfirio Diaz, former
president of Mexico, died in Paris.
(SFC, 12/14/00, p.A8)
1915 Sep 8, Germany began a new
offensive in Argonne on the Western Front.
(HN, 9/8/98)
1915 Sep 25, An allied offensive
was launched in France against the German Army.
(HN, 9/25/98)
1915 Oct 8, The WWI Battle of Loos
ended with virtually no gains for either side. There was loss of over
one hundred thousand French, British, and German lives in this battle.
It marked the first use of poisonous gas by the British, which drifted
back to the British trenches.
(MC, 10/8/01)
1915 Oct 21, The 1st transatlantic
radio-telephone message was transmitted from Arlington, Va., to Paris.
(MC, 10/21/01)
1915 Dec 19, Edith Piaf,
internationally famous French cabaret singer, was born. She is best
remembered for her songs "La Vie en rose" and "Non, je ne regrette
rein."
(HN, 12/19/99)
1915 Dec 25, At the war front near
Laventie, France, British and German soldiers exchanged greetings,
cigarettes and engaged in a short game of free-for-all soccer.
(SFC, 8/3/01, p.D5)
1915 The French government banned
absinthe, the "Green Goddess," which had become renowned for causing
convulsions, hallucinations and psychosis. In 1988 the European Union
lifted the ban on making absinthe.
(WSJ, 1/22/99, p.W8)(http://tinyurl.com/5mqxvs)
1915 Gaudier-Brzeska (23), French
sculptor, died on the Western Front. In 2004 Paul O’Keeffe authored
“Gaudier-Brzeska: An Absolute Case of Genius.”
(Econ, 3/6/04, p.76)
1915-1916 The 10-part silent serial "Les Vampires" by
Louis Feuillade was produced.
(SFC, 8/8/97, p.D3)
1916 Jan 2, The U.S. instructed
Ambassador Sharp to tell the Entente in Paris that America would reject
the German peace offer.
(HN, 1/2/99)
1916 Jan 29, 1st bombings of Paris
by German Zeppelins took place.
(MC, 1/29/02)
1916 Feb 21, The World War I
Battle of Verdun began in France with an unprecedented German artillery
barrage of the French lines; the French were able to prevail after 10
months of fighting. German Gen’l. Erich von Falkenhayn launched the
attack.
(AP, 2/21/98)(HN, 2/21/01)(Sm, 2/06, p.38)
1916 Feb 23, French artillery
killed the entire French 72nd division at Samogneux, Verdun.
(MC, 2/23/02)
1916 Feb 26, General Henri
Philippe Petain took command of the French forces at Verdun. A line of
bayonets protruding from the earth still testifies to French valor at
Verdun in World War I.
(HN, 2/26/98)
1916 Feb 26, Germans sank the
French transport ship Provence II, killing 930.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1916 Mar 6, The Allies recaptured
Fort Douamont in France.
(HN, 3/6/98)
1916 Mar 7, French Defense
Minister Joseph Gallieni resigned from his position.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1916 Mar 14, In the Battle of
Verdun Germans attacked on Mort-Homme ridge, West of Verdun.
(MC, 3/14/02)
1916 Apr 2, German troops overtook
Bois de Caillette.
(MC, 4/2/02)
1916 May 19, The Sykes-Picot
Agreement was a secret understanding between the governments of Britain
and France defining their respective spheres of post-World War I
influence and control in the Middle East. The boundaries of this
agreement still remains in much of the common border between Syria and
Iraq. Britain and France carved up the Levant into an assortment of
monarchies, mandates and emirates. The agreement enshrined Anglo-French
imperialist ambitions at the end of WW II. Syria and Lebanon were put
into the French orbit, while Britain claimed Jordan, Iraq, the Gulf
states and the Palestinian Mandate. Sir Mark Sykes (d.1919 at age 39)
and Francois Picot made the deal.
(WSJ, 2/27/00,
p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes-Picot_Agreement)
1916 May 22, French troops
occupied parts of Fort Douaumont, Verdun.
(MC, 5/22/02)
1916 May 27, French Gen. Joseph
Simon Gallieni (b.1849) died. He had been called out of retirement at
the onset of war to serve in the Ministry of War in Paris and
orchestrated the allied victory at the Battle of the Marne (1914).
(ON, 8/08,
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Galli%C3%A9ni)
1916 Jul 3, The Battle of the
Somme began. More than 100,000 men were killed in the first day.
(HN, 7/3/01)
1916 Jul 4, Poet Alan Seeger died
in action at Befloy-en-Santerre. Born in New York City in 1888, Seeger
went to Paris in 1912 and joined the French Foreign legion at the
outbreak of WWI. He was killed in the Battle of the Somme. He wrote the
lines: I have a rendezvous with death / At some disputed barricade..."
(SFEC, 3/16/97, z1 p.2)(HNQ, 8/23/98)
1916 Aug 12, In Paris Jean Cocteau
took pictures of Pablo Picasso, poet Max Jacob and painter Amedeo
Modigliani and other friends as they met for lunch and passed the
afternoon. It all came out in the 1997 book by Billy Kluver: A Day With
Picasso."
(SFC,11/18/97, p.E1)
1916 Sep 15, Armored tanks were
introduced by the British during the Battle of the Somme.
(HN, 9/15/00)
1916 Oct 26, French leader
Francois Mitterrand, was born. He served as President of France from
1981-95.
(HN, 10/26/98)(MC, 10/26/01)
1916 Nov 2, France reconquered Ft
Vaux, Verdun.
(MC, 11/2/01)
1916 Nov 16, French adjutant-chief
Eugene Rouges died with several of his men when a German artillery
shell exploded in their trench in Gradesnica, Macedonia. In the 1990s
villagers began finding a liquid fortune in vintage cognac buried in
the old trenches.
(AP, 7/23/07)
1916 Dec 3, French commander
Joseph Joffre was dismissed after his failure at the Somme. General
Robert Nivelle became the new French commander-in-chief.
(HN, 12/3/98)
1916 Dec 12, Worst train disaster
ever took place in Modane, France, 543 French Soldiers were killed.
(MC, 12/12/01)
1916 Dec 15, The French defeated
the Germans in the World War I Battle of Verdun. [see Dec 18]
(AP, 12/15/97)
1916 Dec 18, The Battle of Verdun
ended with the French and Germans each having suffered more than
330,000 killed and wounded in 10 months. [see Dec 15]
(HN, 12/18/98)
1916 Eric Satie composed "Trois
melodies."
(SFC,11/14/97, p.C5)
1916 Charles de Foucauld, a former
French army officer turned monk who lived among the Tuareg people in
the Sahara, was killed in an anti-French uprising in Algeria. In 2005
he was beatified by Pope Benedikt XVI. Inspired by the monk, groups
known as the Little Sisters and Little Brothers of Jesus were formed in
Algeria.
(AP, 11/13/05)
1917 Feb, Mata Hari was arrested
in Paris for spying.
(WSJ, 1/16/97, p.A16)
1917 Apr 9, Battle of Arras began
as Canadian troops launched a massive assault on Vimy Ridge in France.
(HN, 4/9/99)(MC, 4/9/02)
1917 May 18,
Satie-Massine-Picasso's ballet "Parade" premiered in Paris, France.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1917 Mar 19, A German submarine in
the Mediterranean Sea sunk the French battleship Danton. In 2009 the
Danton was discovered on the seabed southwest of Sardinia.
(SFC, 2/21/09,
p.A2)(www.wrecksite.eu/wreck.aspx?16848)
1917 May, French soldiers refused
to return to the trenches after the disastrous April-May Chemin des
Dames offensive of Gen. Nivelle, in which more than 30,000 French
soldiers died and 80,000 were wounded to no good purpose. The "La
Chanson de Craonne," sung to the tune of Charles Sablon's "Bonsoir
M'amour" by the mutineers, celebrated the resistance of the soldiers to
return to the front and was banned for many years from French airwaves.
(www.ufppc.org/content/view/6510/)
1917 Jun 7, British Field Marshal
Sir Douglas Haig launched his assault in Flanders to take German
pressure off his French allies. For months, troops of the British
Expeditionary Force fought a series of pointless battles in a
nightmarish landscape of knee-deep shell holes filled with mud and
blasted, skeletal trees. When the campaign finally ground to a halt on
November 10, 1917, the BEF had suffered losses of 300,000 men and
German losses were around 200,000--for a total gain of four miles.
(HNPD, 6/7/99)
1917 Jun 26, General John "Black
Jack" Pershing arrived in France with the first of the 14,000 American
Expeditionary Force.
(AP, 6/26/97)(HN, 6/26/98)(MC, 6/26/02)
1917 Jul 4, During a ceremony in
Paris honoring the French hero of the American Revolution, U.S. Lt.
Col. Charles E. Stanton declared, "Lafayette, we are here!"
(AP, 7/4/97)
1917 Jul 22, British bombed German
lines at Ypres with 4,250,000 grenades.
(MC, 7/22/02)
1917 Sep 4, The American
expeditionary force in France suffered its first fatalities in World
War I when a German plane attacked a British-run base hospital..
(AP, 9/4/08)
1917 Sep 6, French pilot Georges
Guynemer shot down 54th German aircraft.
(MC, 9/6/01)
1917 Sep 8, Eugene Bullard, born
in Columbus, Georgia, (emigrating to France), became the first
African-American combat aviator when he flew a reconnaissance mission
over the city of Metz, France. He was credited with one confirmed
"kill," a German Pfalz he shot down over Verdun.
(MC, 9/8/01)
1917 Sep 20, The British assaulted
the Polygon Forest in France.
(MC, 9/20/01)
1917 Sep 27, Hilaire Germain Edgar
Degas (b1834), French impressionist painter died in Paris. His
fascination with horses was covered in the 1998 book "Degas at the
Races" by Jean Sutherland.
(WSJ, 10/2/96, p.B5)(SFEC, 6/21/98, BR
p.8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Degas)
1917 Oct 15, Mata Hari (b.1876),
the woman whose name has become synonymous with a seductive female spy,
was executed by the French outside Paris on charges of spying for the
Germans during World War I. The daughter of a prosperous Dutch
merchant, Margaretha Geertruida Zelle married a colonial army officer
named MacLeod in 1895. The couple lived for five years in Java and
Sumatra before the marriage failed. By 1905, Mrs. MacLeod was calling
herself Mata Hari--said to be Malay for "eye of the day"--and creating
a sensation as an exotic East Indian dancer in Europe. Among her many
lovers were military officers and, although the facts surrounding her
espionage activities are still unclear, Mata Hari was arrested by the
French as a German spy in February 1917. After a two-day trial before a
military court, Mata Hari was sentenced to death for espionage. In 2002
Richard Skinner authored "The Red Dancer," a novel based on her life.
(WSJ, 1/16/97, p.A16)(AP, 10/15/97)(HNPD,
10/15/98)(SSFC, 3/24/02, p.M4)
1917 Oct 19, The first doughnut
was fried by Salvation Army volunteer women for American troops in
France during World War I.
(HN, 10/19/98)
1917 Oct 21, Members of the First
Division of the U.S. Army training in Luneville, France, became the
first Americans to see action on the front lines of World War I. The
first U.S. troops entered the front lines at Sommervillier under French
command.
(AP, 10/21/98)(HN, 10/21/98)
1917 Nov 10, The assault on
Flanders finally ground to a halt. The British Expeditionary Force
(BEF) had suffered losses of 300,000 men and German losses were around
200,000--for a total gain of four miles and the occupation of
Passchendaele.
(HN, 6/7/98)(HNQ, 11/2/98)
1917 Nov 16, Georges Clemenceau
(76) again became prime minister of France. He appointed himself as
minister of war as well as chief of state. For his contribution to the
victory of the Allies in World War I, premier Clemenceau was referred
to as the "Father of Victory." A physician, journalist, author and
statesman, Clemenceau was an ardent upholder of the French Third
Republic. He strove to create an indomitable "will to victory" and
proclaimed "To be entirely in unity with the soldier, to live, to
suffer, to fight with him." Clemenceau, declared he would wage war "to
the last quarter hour, for the last quarter hour will be ours." Born on
September 28,1841, Clemenceau died on November 24, 1929.
(HNQ, 3/23/99)(AP, 11/16/07)
1917 Nov 17, The French Sculptor
Rodin (77) froze to death in an unheated attic in Meudon, France. He
had applied to the government for quarters as warm as those wherein his
statues were stored, but the government turned him down. His studio was
called La Villa des Brillants. He worked with sculptor A.-E.
Carrier-Belleuse and for years spent a considerable amount of time on
decorative work for public monuments. His work included several
versions of a "Monument to Victor Hugo," "The Kiss," "The Burghers of
Calais" and "The Thinker." His famous "Balzac" wasn’t cast in bronze
until 1939. The film "Camille Claudel" told the story of Rodin’s
mistress, a brilliant sculptress who went mad after their love affair.
(SFC, 12/4/94, p. S-8)(SFEC, 8/25/96, p.T10)(AP,
11/17/97)
1917 Dec 6, Some 1700 people died
in an explosion when a Belgian relief ship and the French munition ship
"Mont Blanc" collided in the harbor at Halifax, Nova Scotia.
(EWH, 4th ed, p.1054)(MC, 12/6/01)
1917 Dec 12, In Modane,
France, a troop train derailed near the entrance of Mt. Cenis tunnel
and 543 people were killed.
(SFC, 6/4/98, p.A15)(AP, 2/18/04)
1917 In France Marcel Duchamp
christened a supine urinal as a work of art, "Fountain," and signed it
with a fictitious name. The original was lost but he authorized an
edition of 8 replicas in 1964.
(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A17)
1917 Egon Schiele, Viennese
artist, made his "Kneeling Girl Propped on Her Elbows."
(WSJ, 11/19/97, p.A20)
1917 Auguste Moreau (b.1834),
French sculptor, died. He and 4 other members of his family designed
light fixtures based on sculptured figures.
(SFC, 1/16/08,
p.G4)(www.aspireauctions.com/auction30/details/4195.html)
1918 Jan 29, The Supreme Allied
Council met at Versailles.
(HN, 1/29/99)
1918 Mar 21, During World War I,
Germany launched the Somme 'Michael' Offensive in France, hoping to
break through the Allied line before American reinforcements could
arrive. It is better remembered as the First Battle of the Somme.
(WUD, 1994, p.1356)(AP, 3/21/97)(HN, 3/21/99)
1918 Mar 23,
Crépy-en-Laonnoise: German artillery shelled Paris France and
256 were killed. The Paris bombs were named "Thick Bertha's Dike"
(nickname for the widow Krupp).
(SS, 3/23/02)
1918 Mar 25, Claude Debussy (55),
French composer, died in Paris. In 1962 Edward Lockspeiser authored
“Debussy,” a look at how the composer shaped the work of Symbolist
writers.
(AP, 3/25/97)(WSJ, 3/1/08, p.W8)
1918 Mar 26, On the Western Front
during World War I the Germans took the French towns Noyon, Roye and
Lihons.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1918 Mar 26, Col. Raynal Bolling
(b.1877), architect of American air power in WWI and resident of
Greenwich, Connecticut, was shot dead by a German patrol in France.
(WSJ, 4/12/08,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raynal_Bolling)
1918 Mar-1919 Jul, The art
collection of Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas, more than 500 paintings and
5,000 prints, was auctioned off in Paris.
(WSJ, 10/21/97, p.A20)
1918 Apr 1, Isaac Rosenberg
(b.1890), British WWI war poet, died near Arras, France, during
Ludendorff’s big spring offensive. In 2008 Jean Moorcroft Wilson
authored “Isaac Rosenberg: The Making of a Great War Poet.”
(WSJ, 4/3/09, p.W6)
1918 Apr 4, Battle of Somme
[France], an offensive by the British against the German Army ended.
(HN, 4/4/99)
1918 Apr 8, The US First Aero
Squadron was assigned to the Western Front for the first time on
observation duty.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1918 Apr 15, Clemenceau published
secret French-Austrian documents.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1918 May 15, Pfc. Henry Johnson
and Pfc. Needham Roberts received the Croix de Guerre for their
services in World War I. They were the first Americans to win France's
highest military medal.
(HN, 5/15/99)
1918 May 28, The Battle of
Cantigny began during World War I as American troops captured the
French town from the Germans; the Americans were able to resist German
counterattacks in the days that followed.
(AP, 5/28/08)
1918 May, The German army staged a
surprise offensive and rolled into the Marne Valley through the center
of the French 6th Army. The Germans were held at bay by some 9,000 US
Marines of the 5th and 6th Regiments of the 4th Brigade.
(SFC, 6/6/97, p.A26)
1918 Jun 4, French and American
troops halted Germany's offensive at Chateau-Thierry, France.
(HN, 6/4/98)
1918 Jun 6, In France the US
Marines counter-attacked the Germans and pushed them back to the woods
at Bois de Belleau. U.S. Marines entered combat at the Battle of
Belleau Wood. 1st US victory of WW I.
(SFC, 6/6/97, p.A26)(HN, 6/6/01)(MC, 6/6/02)
1918 Jun 12, First airplane
bombing raid by an American unit occurred on World War I’s Western
Front in France.
(HN, 6/12/98)
1918 Jul 18, During World War I,
American and French forces launched a counteroffensive against the
Germans during the Second Battle of the Marne.
(AP, 7/18/08)
1918 Jul 19, German armies
retreated across the Marne River in France.
(MC, 7/19/02)
1918 Jun 26, After a brief
respite, the Germans began firing their huge 420 mm howitzer "Big
Bertha" at Paris.
(HN, 6/26/98)
1918 Jun 28, The US Marines took
the Bois de Belleau.
(SFC, 6/6/97, p.A26)
1918 Jul 15, The Second Battle of
the Marne began during World War I.
(AP, 7/15/97)
1918 Jul 30, Poet Joyce Kilmer
(b.1886), a sergeant in the 165th U.S. Infantry Regiment, was killed
during the Second Battle of the Marne in World War I. Kilmer is perhaps
best remembered for his poem "Trees."
(AP,
7/30/08)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Kilmer)
1918 Aug 6, The 2nd battle of the
Marne ended.
(MC, 8/6/02)
1918 Sep 12, During World War I,
U.S. forces led by Gen. John J. Pershing launched an attack on the
German-occupied St. Mihiel salient north of Verdun, France.
(AP, 9/12/97)
1918 Sep 12, British troops retook
Havincourt, Moeuvres, and Trescault along the Western Front.
(HN, 9/12/98)
1918 Sep 13, U.S. and French
forces took St. Mihiel, France, in America's first action as a standing
army.
(HN, 9/13/98)
1918 Sep 26, The Meuse-Argonne
offensive against the Germans began during World War I.
(AP, 9/26/08)
1918 Oct 8, US Sgt. Alvin C. York
almost single-handedly killed 25 German soldiers and captured 132 in
the Argonne Forest in France.
(AP, 10/8/97)
1918 Oct 14, In France the
American 32nd division was sent to engage German troops on the Dame
Marie, while the 5th and 42nd Divisions under Gen. Douglas MacArthur
swept in pincer movements to occupy Cote de Chatillon. The objectives
were taken in 3 days of tough fighting. In 2008 Robert H. Ferrell
authored “The Question of MacArthur’s Reputation: Cote de Chatillon,
October 14-16, 1918.”
(WSJ, 11/24/08, p.A17)
1918 Nov 11, At ten minutes past
five in the morning, German and Allied negotiators placed the final
signatures on the armistice that would end World War I six hours later.
After the signing, French General Ferdinand Foch sent all Allied
commanders the following message: "Hostilities will cease on the entire
[Western] front November 11 at 11:00 a.m." Even as the hour approached
9 of 16 commanders of US divisions on the Western Front ordered a final
assault that left an additional 11,000 casualties. Although the Allies
had not invaded Germany and there was no clear military victory, the
Germans were forced to sign the armistice because of insurmountable
problems. German troops, pushed past their limits of endurance by five
years of fighting, faced a fresh stream of well-equipped American
soldiers. Germany's allies, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and
Bulgaria, had already ceased fighting and mutinies increased as German
soldiers and sailors refused to carry out suicidal missions. Food
shortages, both at home and at the front, had reached crisis levels.
The costs of the First World War were astronomical with 7.5 million
dead and more than 35 million total casualties. The US Armistice Day
holiday was changed to Veteran’s Day after the Korean War. It was
celebrated as “Veteran’s Day” for the first time in the US in Emporia,
Kansas, on November 11, 1953. In 2004 Joseph E. Persico authored
“Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918,
World War I and Its Violent Climax.”
(SFC, 11/9/96, p.A16)(SFC,11/8/97, p.A11)(HNPD,
11/11/98)(SFC, 12/28/04, p.D1)
1918 Nov 21, The last German
troops left Alsace-Lorraine, France.
(HN, 11/21/98)
1918 Dec 8, Gerard Souzay,
baritone (Le Nozze di Figaro), was born in Angers, France.
(MC, 12/8/01)
1918 Dec 9, French troops occupied
Mainz.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1918 Dec 13, President Wilson
arrived in France, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe
while in office.
(AP, 12/13/97)
1918 Picasso (1881-1973), French
painter, married Olga Khokhlova, one of Diaghilev’s Russian dancers,
whom he met in Rome.
(Econ, 11/17/07, p.99)
1918 In France the Meuse-Argonne
offensive action was made. A portion of the U.S. 77th Division in World
War I was encircled by the Germans during the 1918 Meuse-Argonne
offensive of World War I and called the "lost battalion.". The unit
managed to hold off its attackers until relief finally arrived.
(SFC, 1/26/98, p.A17)
1919 Jan 18, The World War I Peace
Congress, held to negotiate peace treaties ending World War I, opened
in Versailles, France.
(AP, 1/18/08)
1919 Feb 3, League of Nations held
its 1st meeting in Paris.
(MC, 2/3/02)
1919 Feb 15, The American Legion
was organized in Paris.
(440 Int’l., 2/15/99)
1919 Feb 19, The First Pan African
Congress met in Paris, France.
(HN, 2/19/99)
1919 Mar 8, Reports from Paris
indicated that 6,000 American men had married French women in the past
year.
(HN, 3/8/98)
1919 Mar 14, Emile Cottin was
condemned to death for the attempt on the life of Clemenceau.
(HN, 3/14/98)
1919 Mar 15-17, The American
Legion was founded in Paris by members of the American Expeditionary
Force.
(AP, 3/15/97)(www.legion.org/)
1919 Mar 22, The first
international airline service was inaugurated on a weekly schedule
between Paris and Brussels.
(AP, 3/22/99)
1919 Mar 25, The Paris Peace
Commission adopted a plan to protect nations from the influx of foreign
labor.
(HN, 3/24/98)
1919 Apr 12, Maurice Girodias,
French publisher, was born.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1919 May 4, Some 3,000 young
scholars from 13 colleges and universities rallied at Tiananmen Square
to protest the loss of Shandong province to the Japanese under the
Versailles Treaty at the Paris Peace Conference. German concessions in
China were bequeathed to Japan. Among the protestors were people who
helped form the Communist Party.
(SFC, 6/25/98, p.A8)(WSJ, 5/17/99, p.A21)(Econ,
5/3/08, p.13)
1919 May 6, Paris Peace Conference
disposed of German colonies; German East Africa was assigned to Britain
& France, German SW Africa to South Africa.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1919 Jun 28, The Treaty of
Versailles was signed in France, ending (WW I) World War I. World War I
began in 1914 and ended on this date. Germany signed the Treaty of
Versailles under protest. Books by participants included "Peacemaking"
by Harold Nicolson; "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" by John
Maynard Keynes; and "The Truth About the Peace Treaties" by David Lloyd
George. In 2000 Richard Holmes authored "The Western Front." Nearly 1
million British died and nearly 2 million each for France, Germany,
Russia and Turkey. In 2002 Margaret MacMillan authored "Paris 1919: Six
Months That Changed the World."
(HFA, ‘96, p.32)(AP, 6/28/97)(HN, 6/28/98)(WSJ,
8/16/00, p.A20)(SSFC, 12/15/02, p.M3)
1919 Aug 25, The 1st scheduled
passenger service by airplane between Paris and London.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1919 Nov 19, The Senate rejected
the Treaty of Versailles by a vote of 55 in favor to 39 against, short
of the two-thirds majority needed for ratification.
(AP, 11/19/97)
1919 Nov 30, Women cast votes for
the first time in French legislative elections.
(HN, 11/30/98)
1919 Dec 3, Pierre A. Renoir (78),
French painter and sculptor, died.
(MC, 12/3/01)
1919 Dec 18, British pilot John
William Alcock (b.1892), enroute to a Paris air show, was killed while
making a forced landing in fog near Rouen. He and navigator Arthur
Witten Brown (1886-1948) had recently completed the world’s first
nonstop transatlantic flight [see June 14].
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Whitten_Brown)(ON, 4/09, p.1)
1919 At the Folies Bergere women
performed totally nude on stage for the first time in the modern
Western World.
(SFEC, 1/10/99, Z1 p.8)
c1919 Jose Clemente Orozco, David
Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, Mexican painters in Paris, decided
that the Mexican revolution must be expressed in a public art that all
could understand.
(SFEC, 11/8/98, p.T5)
1920 Jan 3, The last of the U.S.
troops quit France.
(HN, 1/3/99)
1920 Jan 24, Amedeo Modigliani
(b.1884), Italian sculptor, painter, died in Paris. His mistress Jeanne
Hebuterne, pregnant with his child, committed suicide 2 days later
rather than live without him. In 2006 Jeffrey Meyers authored
“Modigliani: A Life.”
(www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_bio_110.html)(WSJ, 3/21/06,
p.D8)
1920 Jan 26, Jeanne Hebuterne
(b.1898), the mistress of Amadeo Modigliani, killed herself 2 days
following Modigliani’s death while carrying his child.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_H%C3%A9buterne)
1920 May 16, Joan of Arc was
canonized by Pope Benedict XV.
(AP, 5/16/97)(HN, 5/16/98)
1920 Jun 4, The Treaty of
Trianon, signed at Versailles, was forced upon Hungary by the
victorious Allies after WWII and resulted in Hungary giving up nearly
three-fourths of its territory to Romania, Czechoslovakia and the
Kingdom of Serbs, Croat and Slovenes. Hungary lost more than half its
population, including some 3 million Hungarians. Hungary ceded the
hills of Transylvania to Romania.
(HNQ, 7/5/98)(WSJ, 1/2/97,
p.1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Trianon)
1920 Dec 30, Ho Chi Minh helped
found the Communist Party of France on December 30, 1920, while a
student there. Known then as Nguyen Ai Quoc, Ho went on to Moscow in
1923 for training in revolutionary strategy by the Communist
International. After several years in the Soviet Union and China, Ho
returned to Vietnam to lead his nation’s revolutionary movement.
(HNQ, 4/13/99)
1920 Sara (b.1883) and Gerald
Murphy (d.1964) rented a floor of the Hotel du Cap on the French
Riviera for the summer while their villa was being built, and invited
their friends, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Picasso, Marlene Dietrich, and
the Windsors. Hemingway’s book, "A Moveable Feast," was a memoir on the
Murphys. Fitzgerald’s characters of Dick and Nicole Diver in "Tender Is
the Night" was based on the Murphys. In 1962 Calvin Thomas published
"Living Well Is the Best Revenge," based on the Murphys. In 1983
Honoria Murphy published a personal memoir of her parents "Sara and
Gerald." In 1998 Amanda Vail published "Everybody Was So Young: Gerald
and Sara Murphy-- A Lost Generation Love Story."
(CNT, Nov.,1994, p.219)(SFEC, 8/9/98, BR 9 p.9)
1920 The French film "La Belle
Dame Sans Merci" was directed by Germaine Dulac.
(SFC, 5/26/98, p.D5)
1920 Emile Coue (1857-1926),
French pharmacist, devised the mantra "Every day, in every way, I’m
getting better and better" to promote his theory of self-improvement
through auto-suggestion.
(NH, 7/98, p.20)
1920 Leon Bourgeois (b.1851),
French premier (1895-96) won the Nobel Peace Prize.
(SC, 5/29/02)
1920 Suzanne Lenglen of France,
wearing a shockingly short skirt, won 2 gold medals in tennis at the
Olympic games in Antwerp, Belgium.
(NG, 8/04, Geographica)
1920 France, following populations
losses in World War I, devised the Medal of the French Family with a
special gold medal award to women who had 8 or more children.
(Econ, 4/19/08, p.62)
1920 Chad was separated from
Ubangi-Shari to form a 4th colony of French Equatorial Africa.
(www.discoverfrance.net)
1920-1925 In Paris, The Swedish Ballet, founded by
Rolf de Mare, brought together painters, filmmakers, actors, dancers
and composers in Paris. Designs by Ferdnand Leger and Giorgio de
Chirico, music by Eric Satie and Cole Porter, and film by Rene Clair
marked the performances.
(SFC, 6/20/96, p.D1)
Go to 1921