It is paradoxical that a former delinquent with a colorful life ends up being the creator and director of the French police; even more so if...
On June 4, 1783, the Montgolfier brothers gave the first public demonstration of a hot-air balloon in southern France. The balloon, made of ...
One of the most sensational presentations at the 1923 International Congress of Surgeons in London was made by the Russia-born French surgeo...
For nearly 200 years, the steam engine powered the world’s machineries, but its origins were very humble. It began with the pressure cooker,...
One Monday morning in July 1867, eminent French mathematician Michel Chasles stormed into the building of the French Academy of Sciences in ...
In the early 19th century, arsenic was most widely used to kill rats and insufferable husbands alike. The chemical element was odorless and ...
Freak shows were a very popular medium of entertainment in Europe and the United States of America for the major part of the 19th century. T...
Alexandre Dumas’s literary classic The Count of Monte Cristo is one of Dumas’s most famous and beloved novels, but this satisfying tale of ...
On the night of July 31, 1761, a frigate of the French East India Company named Utile , captained by Jean de La Fargue, and carrying a contr...
During the early years of space flight, animals were frequently flown into space and their bodies examined to investigate the various physio...
The man in the iron mask has been a historical enigma since the 18th century. Born circa 1658, he became a prisoner that hopped across the t...
Even if you think you know who Victor Lustig is, you don’t. Beyond the charming salutations, the livid scar on his left cheekbone and the ma...
Pont Ambroix, also called the Ambrussum Bridge, was a major Roman bridge across the Vidourle River connecting the end of Villetelle to Galla...
They say that every action arises from either love or hate. Imagine then, what a creative catastrophe would unfold if a man was inspired by ...
In 1879 in a small town in the south-east of France called Châteauneuf-de-Galaure, a postman began the construction of a fantastic palace, w...
Situated just ten miles south of Calais, Balinghem is an unremarkable little village, but five hundred years ago this quiet countryside play...
If gluttony is a sin, then perhaps the worst offender was a man named Tarrare who lived in 18th century France. He had such an insatiable ap...
On July 28, 1835, Giuseppe Marco Fieschi positioned himself in front of an open window on the third floor of N. 50 Boulevard du Temple in Pa...
When Prussian forces had Paris under siege during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the beleaguered Parisians had only one hope to get messag...
When French-born but London-based civil and electrical engineer, Jules Albert Berly, traveled to Paris for the 1881 International Exposition...
