- André René Roussimoff was born on 19 May 1946 in Coulommiers, Seine-et-Marne, the son of immigrants Boris Roussimoff (1907–1993) and Mariann Roussimoff Stoeff (1910–1997); his father was Bulgarian and his mother was Polish.
- Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born in 1883 to Eugénie Jeanne Devolle Chanel, known as Jeanne, a laundrywoman, in the charity hospital run by the Sisters of Providence (a poorhouse) in Saumur, Maine-et-Loire.
- Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell was born on 25 December 1961: 436 in Maisons-Laffitte, Île-de-France, France, the ninth and youngest child of Elisabeth (née Meynard), a French-born scholar, and Robert Maxwell (born Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch), a Czechoslovak-born British media proprietor.
- Fermat was born in 1601 in Beaumont-de-Lomagne, France — the late 15th-century mansion where Fermat was born is now a museum.
- René Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine, Province of Touraine (now Descartes, Indre-et-Loire), France, on 31 March 1596.
clockwise around the Mediterranean
- World Report 2024: France (hrw.org)
Excessive use of force by law enforcement against protesters and detainees persisted in 2023, a year marked by demonstrations and strikes. Actions taken to curb civil society activities raised concerns about the erosion of the rule of law.
Why, anybody can have a brain. That’s a very mediocre commodity. Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the Earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain. Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have. But they have one thing you haven’t got: a diploma.
The Wizard, The Wizard of Oz
- CIA espionage orders for the 2012 French presidential election (wikileaks.org)
All major French political parties were targeted for infiltration by the CIA’s human (“HUMINT”) and electronic (“SIGINT”) spies in the seven months leading up to France’s 2012 presidential election. The revelations are contained within three CIA tasking orders published today by WikiLeaks as context for its forth coming CIA Vault 7 series. Named specifically as targets are the French Socialist Party (PS), the National Front (FN) and Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) together with current President Francois Hollande, then President Nicolas Sarkozy, current round one presidential front runner Marine Le Pen, and former presidential candidates Martine Aubry and Dominique Strauss-Khan.
- Dealmaker: Al Yousef (wikileaks.org)
Today WikiLeaks publishes a secret document from the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) International Court of Arbitration, pertaining to a dispute over commission payment in relation to a $3.6 billion arms deal between French state-owned company GIAT Industries SA (now Nexter Systems) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The agreement was for the sale of 388 Leclerc combat tanks, 46 armoured vehicles, 2 training tanks, spare parts and ammunition. It was signed in 1993 and scheduled to be completed in 2008.
- France (Wikipedia)
France (French: [fʁɑ̃s]), officially the French Republic (French: République française [ʁepyblik fʁɑ̃sɛːz]), is a country located primarily in Western Europe. It also includes overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans, giving it one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones in the world.
