Thursday 14th of May 1643 (x) — King of France and Navarre Louis XIV becomes King upon the death of his father Louis XIII
Louis' reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country in European history.
Saturday 19th of August 1662 (-) — Mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and philosopher Blaise Pascal dies of tuberculosis
Friday 6th of May 1678 (-) — Composer Joseph Chabanceau de La Barre dies of unknown causes
Saturday 16th of November 1686 (x) — King of France and Navarre Louis XIV is operated on an anal fistula by Dr. Charles François Felix
Dr. Felix first practised on several peasants.
Thursday 6th of November 1692 (+) — Poet Louis Racine is born
Sunday 21st of November 1694 (+) — Writer Voltaire is born
Tuesday 21st of April 1699 (-) — Dramatist Jean Racine dies of liver cancer
Friday 30th of August 1748 (+) — Painter Jacques-Louis David is born
Saturday 29th of January 1763 (-) — Poet Louis Racine dies of unknown causes
Saturday 16th of March 1771 (+) — Painter Antoine-Jean Gros is born
Wednesday 9th of March 1796 (x) — War leader Napoléon Bonaparte marries Joséphine de Beauharnais
Wednesday 16th of October 1799 (-) — Composer Antoine-Frédéric Gresnick dies of unknown causes
Friday 6th of December 1805 (-) — Painter, balloonist, army officer and inventor Nicolas-Jacques Conté dies of unknown causes
Saturday 26th of March 1814 (-) — Physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin dies of natural causes
Monday 14th of July 1817 (-) — Writer Germaine de Staël dies of paralysis
Thursday 26th of January 1826 (-) — Artist Théodore Géricault dies of tuberculosis
Thursday 12th of November 1840 (+) — Artist Auguste Rodin is born
Friday 18th of March 1842 (+) — Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé is born
Tuesday 22nd of October 1844 (+) — Actress Sarah Bernhardt is born
Wednesday 7th of June 1848 (+) — Painter Paul Gauguin is born
Friday 22nd of April 1853 (+) — Law enforcement officer and biometrics researcher Alphonse Bertillon is born
Sunday 17th of February 1856 (-) — Poet Heinrich Heine dies of chronic lead poisoning
It had been suggested that Heine suffered from multiple sclerosis or syphilis.
Monday 1st of June 1857 (x) — 'Les Fleurs du Mal' by Poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire is first published
The author and the publisher were prosecuted under the regime of the Second Empire for insult to public decency.
Thursday 18th of March 1858 (+) — Inventor and mechanical engineer Rudolf Diesel is born
Sunday 15th of May 1859 (+) — Magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity pioneer Pierre Curie is born
Monday 22nd of November 1869 (+) — Writer André Gide is born
Tuesday 13th of October 1874 (-) — Double murderer Pierre-Désiré Moreau is executed by the Guillotine
Moreau poisoned his two wives, Félicité-Hortense Aubry on 18 August 1873 and Adélaïde-Louise Lagneau on 28 May 1874.
Thursday 3rd of June 1875 (-) — Composer Georges Bizet dies of angina pectoris
Wednesday 22nd of January 1879 (+) — Cubist painter, poet and typographist Francis Picabia is born
Tuesday 5th of October 1880 (-) — Composer Jacques Offenbach dies of gout
Monday 30th of April 1883 (-) — Painter Édouard Manet dies of untreated syphilis and rheumatism
Saturday 22nd of December 1883 (+) — Composer Edgard Varèse is born
Wednesday 12th of September 1888 (+) — Actor, singer and entertainer Maurice Chevalier is born
Sunday 29th of March 1891 (-) — Painter Georges Seurat dies of meningitis, pneumonia, infectious angina or diphtheria
Saturday 2nd of January 1892 (x) — Writer Guy de Maupassant tries to commit suicide by cutting his throat
Thursday 22nd of December 1892 (+) — Mistress of Henri Désiré Landru aka Le Barbe-Bleue de Gambais Fernande Segret is born
Friday 22nd of January 1892 (+) — Aircraft designer Marcel Dassault is born
Saturday 7th of October 1893 (x) — Serial killer Henri Désiré Landru marries Marie-Catherine Rémy
Landru and Rémy already had a daughter born on 4 June 1891.
Sunday 5th of November 1893 (+) — Industrial designer Raymond Loewy is born
Sunday 4th of February 1894 (-) — Musician and musical instrument designer Adolphe Sax dies of unknown causes
Sunday 3rd of October 1897 (+) — Poet and writer Louis Aragon is born
Wednesday 9th of August 1899 (+) — Chief executioner André Obrecht is born
Obrecht was the official executioner of France from 1951 until 1976.
Saturday 13th of April 1901 (+) — Psychoanalist Jacques Lacan is born
Monday 29th of September 1902 (-) — Writer Émile Zola dies of carbon monoxide poisoning
Thursday 21st of July 1904 (x) — Serial killer Henri Désiré Landru is sentenced to 2 years imprisonment for fraud
Wednesday 21st of June 1905 (+) — Writer, philosopher, political activist and critic Jean-Paul Sartre is born
Wednesday 28th of June 1905 (-) — Murderer Henri Languille is executed by the Guillotine
Dr. Beaurieux lifted the head out of the basked and called out Languille’s name upon which the head opened its eyes.
Wednesday 26th of April 1905 (+) — Film director Jean Vigo is born
Thursday 2nd of March 1905 (-) — Victim of Jeanne Weber aka l’Ogresse de la Goutte d’Or Georgette is strangled by Jeanne Weber aka l’Ogresse de la Goutte d’Or
Sunday 26th of March 1905 (-) — Victim of Jeanne Weber aka l’Ogresse de la Goutte d’Or Germaine Weber is strangled by Jeanne Weber aka l’Ogresse de la Goutte d’Or
Diphtheria was blamed for Germaine's death.
Monday 28th of May 1906 (x) — Serial killer Henri Désiré Landru is sentenced to 3 months imprisonment for fraud
Monday 29th of January 1906 (x) — Serial killer Jeanne Weber is brought to trial for the strangling of two children, but found not guilty
Friday 1st of November 1907 (-) — Symbolist writer Alfred Jarry dies of tuberculosis aggravated by drug and alcohol use
Jarry's last request was for a toothpick.
Sunday 12th of May 1907 (-) — Writer Joris-Karl Huysmans dies of cancer of the mouth
Saturday 29th of February 1908 (+) — Artist Balthasar Kłossowski is born
Sunday 8th of November 1908 (-) — Playwright Victorien Sardou dies of pulmonary congestion
Monday 4th of January 1909 (x) — Serial killer Henri Désiré Landru is sentenced in absentia to five years imprisonment for fraud
Saturday 20th of February 1909 (x) — Founder of the Futurist movement Filippo Tommaso Marinetti publishes the Futurist Manifesto in the Le Figaro newspaper
Saturday 12th of March 1910 (x) — Serial killer Henri Désiré Landru is sentenced to three years imprisonment for fraud
Thursday 7th of September 1911 (x) — Surrealist writer Guillaume Apollinaire is arrested and jailed on suspicion of aiding and abetting the theft of the Mona Lisa and a number of Egyptian statuettes from the Louvre
Apollinaire was released a week later. The thefts were committed by Vincenzo Peruggia to whom Apollinaire gave shelter and Apollinaire voluntarily surrendered a number of stolen statuettes left behind by him.
Monday 25th of December 1911 (+) — Artist Louise Bourgeois is born
Saturday 13th of December 1913 (x) — Thief Vincenzo Peruggia is arrested when he tried to sell the Mona Lisa, stolen by him two-and-a-half years earlier, to an antique dealer
Sunday 26th of July 1914 (x) — Serial killer Henri Désiré Landru is sentenced to four years imprisonment for fraud
Because of his previous convictions Landru faced transportation to the penal colony of Guyana.
Thursday 6th of July 1916 (-) — Symbolist painter Odilon Redon dies of unknown causes
Friday 16th of February 1917 (-) — Writer Octave Mirbeau dies of unknown causes
Thursday 27th of September 1917 (-) — Impressionist artist Edgar Degas dies of unknown causes
Saturday 9th of November 1918 (-) — Surrealist writer Guillaume Apollinaire dies of influenza
Monday 25th of March 1918 (-) — Composer Claude Debussy dies of rectal cancer
In December 1915 Debussy underwent one of the earliest colostomy operations ever performed.
Friday 4th of July 1919 (x) — Doctor and serial killer Marcel Petiot is discharged from the army
Petiot was diagnosed as suffering from mental disorder, neurasthenia, depression, melancholia, obsession and phobia.
Thursday 15th of December 1921 (x) — Doctor and serial killer Marcel Petiot graduates from the university as a doctor of medicine with the tract ‘Contributions to the study of Acute Progressive Paralysis’
Acute Progressive Paralysis was a disease Henri Desiré Landru was suffering from.
Monday 26th of March 1923 (-) — Actress Sarah Bernhardt dies of uremia following kidney failure
Sunday 18th of January 1925 (+) — Philosopher Gilles Deleuze is born
Wednesday 1st of July 1925 (-) — Pianist and composer Erik Satie dies of cirrhosis of the liver
After his death Satie's friends discovered an apartment replete with squalor and chaos. Among many other unsorted papers and miscellaneous items, it contained a large number of umbrellas and two grand pianos placed one on top of the other, the upper instrument used as storage for letters and parcels.
Tuesday 27th of April 1926 (x) — Serial poisoner Antoinette Scieri is sentenced to life-imprisonment
Thursday 24th of February 1927 (+) — Muse and second wife of Pablo Picasso Jacqueline Roque is born
Friday 9th of December 1927 (+) — Composer and electronic music pioneer Pierre Henry is born
Wednesday 14th of December 1927 (-) — Radical artist and poet Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven dies of gas suffocation
von Freytag-Loringhoven may have forgotten to turn the gas off, someone else may have turned it on, or it may have been an intentional act.
Thursday 26th of January 1928 (+) — Film director Roger Vadim is born
Monday 23rd of January 1928 (+) — Actress Jeanne Moreau is born
Monday 28th of December 1931 (+) — Theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International Guy Debord is born
Wednesday 27th of April 1932 (+) — Actress Anouk Aimée is born
Friday 18th of August 1933 (+) — Film director Roman Polanski is born
Friday 5th of October 1934 (-) — Film director Jean Vigo dies of sepsis due to tuberculosis
Saturday 1st of August 1936 (-) — Aviation pioneer Louis Blériot dies of a heart attack
Monday 31st of August 1936 (+) — Murderer Georges Rapin is born
Tuesday 30th of March 1937 (+) — Child killer Lucien Léger is born
Saturday 30th of October 1937 (+) — Film director Claude Lelouche is born
Tuesday 28th of December 1937 (-) — Composer, pianist and conductor Maurice Ravel dies after surgery in an attempt to stop ventricular dilatation
Tuesday 11th of January 1938 (x) — Writer and playwright Samuel Beckett is stabbed in the chest and nearly killed when he refused the solicitations of a notorious pimp who went by the name of Prudent
At a preliminary hearing Beckett asked his attacker for the motive behind the stabbing. Prudent replied: "Je ne sais pas, Monsieur. Je m'excuse". Beckett eventually dropped the charges against his attacker.
Monday 17th of June 1940 (x) — General Philippe Pétain orders all Frenchmen to lay down their arms against Nazi Germany
Thursday 29th of January 1942 (+) — Singer, actress and murderess Claudine Longet is born
Tuesday 26th of May 1942 (x) — Doctor and serial killer Marcel Petiot is sentenced to one year on probabtion and fined 10.000 Francs for prescribing heroin to drug addicts Jean-Marc Van Bever and Jeannette Gaul
Van Bever is sentenced to one year imprisonment and fined 2.400 Francs in absentio and Gaul to six months imprisonment and fined 2.400 Francs. On 26 January 1943 Petiot's fine was brought down to 2.400 Francs.
Friday 22nd of October 1943 (+) — Actress Catherine Deneuve is born
Wednesday 13th of December 1944 (-) — Painter and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky dies of a stroke
Wednesday 6th of September 1944 (+) — Artist Christian Boltanski is born
Monday 19th of February 1951 (-) — Writer André Gide dies of natural causes
Monday 1st of October 1951 (-) — Chief executioner Jules-Henri Desfourneaux dies of a heart attack
Sunday 27th of November 1955 (-) — Composer Arthur Honegger dies of a heart attack
Wednesday 16th of March 1955 (+) — Actress Isabelle Huppert is born
Tuesday 28th of February 1956 (-) — Gangster and French public enemy No. 1 for 1950 Émile Buisson is executed by the Guillotine by André Olbrecht
Sunday 16th of December 1956 (+) — Musician Lizzy Mercier Descloux is born
Saturday 16th of March 1957 (-) — Sculptor Constantin Brâncuși dies of unknown causes
Monday 26th of January 1959 (-) — Heilstrom mystic Bruno Gröning dies of stomach cancer
Wednesday 3rd of May 1961 (-) — Phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty dies of a heart attack
Wednesday 6th of June 1962 (-) — Artist Yves Klein dies of a heart attack
Monday 9th of July 1962 (-) — Writer and philosopher Georges Bataille dies of cerebral arteriosclerosis
Tuesday 24th of December 1963 (-) — Dada artist Tristan Tzara dies of unknown causes
Sunday 5th of July 1964 (x) — Child killer Lucien Léger is arrested
In Léger's possesion a draft of a novel was found: 'Journal d'un Assassin'.
Thursday 22nd of October 1964 (x) — Writer, philosopher, political activist and critic Jean-Paul Sartre becomes the first person to decline the Nobel Prize
"A writer who adopts political, social, or literary positions must act only with the means that are his own — that is, the written word. All the honors he may receive expose his readers to a pressure I do not consider desirable. If I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre it is not the same thing as if I sign myself Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prizewinner."
Friday 30th of December 1966 (+) — Murderer Stanley Baker is born
Baker's father was in the US Army in Paris.
Wednesday 27th of September 1967 (-) — Russian aristocrat Felix Yusupov dies of unknown causes
Thursday 15th of July 1971 (x) — Artist Jean Tinguely marries Niki de Saint Phalle
Thursday 18th of November 1976 (-) — Artist Man Ray dies of a lung infection
Thursday 1st of July 1976 (-) — Surrealist artist Max Ernst dies of complications from a stroke
Friday 5th of November 1982 (-) — Actor and film director Jacques Tati dies of pulmonary embolism
Friday 24th of December 1982 (-) — Poet and writer Louis Aragon dies of unknown causes
Wednesday 17th of October 1984 (-) — Poet, writer and painter Henri Michaux dies of unknown causes
Sunday 12th of February 1984 (-) — Writer Julio Cortázar dies of leukemia
Some sources state that Cortázar died from AIDS as a result of receiving a blood transfusion.
Sunday 9th of September 1984 (-) — Film director and murderer Yılmaz Güney dies of gastric cancer
Monday 14th of April 1986 (-) — Philosopher, political activist, feminist and social theorist Simone de Beauvoir dies of pneumonia
Monday 29th of December 1986 (-) — Film director Andrei Tarkovsky dies of lung cancer
Wednesday 28th of October 1987 (-) — Surrealist artist André Masson dies of natural causes
Wednesday 5th of August 1987 (-) — Circus acrobat and director Joseph Bouglione dies of unknown causes
Tuesday 1st of December 1987 (x) — Leaders of Action Directe Jean-Marie Rouillan, Nathalie Menigon, Joëlle Aubron and Georges Cipriani start hungestriking in prison
Tuesday 6th of March 1990 (-) — Performance artist Gina Pane dies of cancer
Sunday 30th of January 1994 (-) — Writer Pierre Boulle dies of natural causes
Monday 28th of March 1994 (-) — Playwright Eugène Ionesco dies of natural causes
Tuesday 20th of June 1995 (-) — Philosopher Emil Cioran dies of Alzheimer's disease
Monday 8th of January 1996 (-) — President of the French Republic François Mitterand dies of prostate cancer
A few days before his death Mitterand was joined by family members and close friends for a "last meal" that attracted controversy because it included the serving of roast ortolan bunting, a small wild songbird that is a protected species whose sale is illegal in France.
Wednesday 16th of April 1997 (-) — Artist, writer and filmmaker Roland Topor dies of a cerebral hemorrhage
Tuesday 23rd of December 1997 (x) — Terrorist Ilich Sánchez is sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole
Saturday 15th of March 1997 (-) — Artist Victor Vasarely dies of prostate cancer
Tuesday 21st of April 1998 (-) — Philosopher, sociologist and literary theorist Jean-François Lyotard dies of leukemia
Sunday 4th of February 2001 (-) — Composer Iannis Xenakis dies of a serious illness
Tuesday 18th of December 2001 (-) — Singer and actor Gilbert Bécaud dies of cancer
Monday 19th of March 2001 (x) — Start of the trial against Serial killer Guy Georges
Tuesday 8th of June 2004 — The Eyes Had it: A surprise concert by Louise Vertigo in an amazing leather workshop
Friday 8th of October 2004 (-) — Philosopher Jacques Derrida dies of pancreatic cancer
Tuesday 6th of March 2007 (-) — Sociologist, philosopher and cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard dies of unknown causes
Sunday 1st of June 2008 (-) — Fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent dies of brain cancer
Thursday 19th of November 2009 (-) — Fashion model Daul Kim commits suicide by hanging
A final post on Kim's blog read: “Say hi to forever.”
Friday 30th of October 2009 (-) — Anthropologist and ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss dies of a heart attack
Sunday 12th of September 2010 (-) — Film director Claude Chabrol dies of unknown causes
Saturday 1st of March 2014 (-) — Film director Alain Resnais dies of unknown causes
Wednesday 22nd of October 2014 — The Eyes Had it: A Chinese restaurant near Boulevard Saint-Germain
Sunday 16th of July 2023 (-) — Actress and singer Jane Birkin dies of unknown causes
Tuesday 11th of June 2024 (-) — Singer-songwriter Françoise Hardy dies of laryngeal cancer
Tuesday 18th of June 2024 (-) — Actress Anouk Aimée dies of undisclosed causes
