Jules-Henri Desfourneaux
Jules-Henri Desfourneaux (17 December 1877, in Bar-le-Duc – 1 October 1951) was the last French executioner to officiate in public. He came from a long line of executioners named Desfourneaux stretching back many hundreds of years. Like all French executioners since 1792 he carried out the death penalty by Decapitation, beheading with a guillotine. Desfourneaux was recruited by his predecessor Anatole Deibler and attended his first execution as second assistant in 1909. Following the death of Deibler in 1939—the latter having died of a heart attack in a Metro station while en route to his 300th execution—he was elected chief and was in charge of the last public execution in France on 17 June 1939, when he guillotined the five-time murderer Eugène Weidmann. This execution was also notable as it is one of the few ever filmed, having been shot from a private apartment near the prison. For reasons unknown, Desfourneaux insisted that Greenwich rather than summertime dawn shou ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bar-le-Duc
Bar-le-Duc (), formerly known as Bar, is a commune in the Meuse département, of which it is the capital. The department is in Grand Est in northeastern France. The lower, more modern and busier part of the town extends along a narrow valley, shut in by wooded or vine-clad hills, and is traversed throughout its length by the Ornain, which is crossed by several bridges. It is limited towards the north-east by the Marne–Rhine Canal, on the south-west by a small arm of the Ornain, called the ''Canal des Usines'', on the left bank of which the upper town (''Ville Haute'') is situated. The highly rarefied Bar-le-duc jelly, also known as Lorraine jelly, is a spreadable preparation of white currant or red currant fruit preserves, hailing from this town. First referenced in the historical record in 1344, it is also colloquially referred to as "Bar caviar". History Bar-le-Duc was at one time the seat of the county, from 1354 the Duchy of Bar. Though probably of ancient origin, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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French Resistance
The French Resistance (french: La Résistance) was a collection of organisations that fought the German occupation of France during World War II, Nazi occupation of France and the Collaborationism, collaborationist Vichy France, Vichy régime during the World War II, Second World War. Resistance Clandestine cell system, cells were small groups of armed men and women (called the Maquis (World War II), Maquis in rural areas) who, in addition to their guerrilla warfare activities, were also publishers of underground newspapers, providers of first-hand intelligence information, and maintainers of escape networks that helped Allies of World War II, Allied soldiers and airmen trapped behind enemy lines. The Resistance's men and women came from all economic levels and political leanings of French society, including émigrés, academics, students, Aristocratic family, aristocrats, conservative Catholic Church, Roman Catholics (including priests and Yvonne Beauvais, nuns), Protestantis ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1951 Deaths
Events January * January 4 – Korean War: Third Battle of Seoul – Chinese and North Korean forces capture Seoul for the second time (having lost the Second Battle of Seoul in September 1950). * January 9 – The Government of the United Kingdom announces abandonment of the Tanganyika groundnut scheme for the cultivation of peanuts in the Tanganyika Territory, with the writing off of £36.5M debt. * January 15 – In a court in West Germany, Ilse Koch, The "Witch of Buchenwald", wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment. * January 20 – Winter of Terror: Avalanches in the Alps kill 240 and bury 45,000 for a time, in Switzerland, Austria and Italy. * January 21 – Mount Lamington in Papua New Guinea erupts catastrophically, killing nearly 3,000 people and causing great devastation in Oro Province. * January 25 – Dutch author Anne de Vries releases the first volume of his children's novel '' Journey Through ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1877 Births
Events January–March * January 1 – Queen Victoria is proclaimed '' Empress of India'' by the '' Royal Titles Act 1876'', introduced by Benjamin Disraeli, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom . * January 8 – Great Sioux War of 1876 – Battle of Wolf Mountain: Crazy Horse and his warriors fight their last battle with the United States Cavalry in Montana. * January 20 – The Conference of Constantinople ends, with Ottoman Turkey rejecting proposals of internal reform and Balkan provisions. * January 29 – The Satsuma Rebellion, a revolt of disaffected samurai in Japan, breaks out against the new imperial government; it lasts until September, when it is crushed by a professionally led army of draftees. * February 17 – Major General Charles George Gordon of the British Army is appointed Governor-General of the Sudan. * March – '' The Nineteenth Century'' magazine is founded in London. * March 2 – Compromise ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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List Of Executioners
This is a list of people who have acted as official executioners. Algeria Alger Monsieur d'Alger: The Executioners of the French Republic In 1870 the Republic of France abolished all local executioners and named the executioner of Algiers, Antoine Rasseneux, Éxécuteur des Arrêts Criminels en Algérie, which became France's official description of the executioner of Algeria's occupation. From then on there would be one only executioner to carry out death sentences for all of Algeria. Since the colony's executioner was required to live in Algiers, people soon started to refer to him as ''"Le Monsieur d'Alger"'' ("The Man From Algiers"). Upon his nomination, Rasseneux was permitted to choose four among France's and Algeria's former local executioners to be his aides. Australia Austria Hall in Tirol Meran Salzburg Steyr Vienna Belgium Brazil After 1808, during the Portuguese-Brazilian Kingdom (1808–1822) and the Empire (1822–1889), when Bra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Janet Flanner
Janet Flanner (March 13, 1892 – November 7, 1978) was an American writer and pioneering narrative journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of ''The New Yorker'' magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975.Yagoda, Ben ''About Town: The New Yorker and the World it Made'', Scribner (New York): 2000, p. 76 She wrote under the pen name "Genêt". She also published a single novel, ''The Cubical City'', set in New York City. She was a prominent member of America's expatriate community living in Paris before WWII. Along with her longtime partner Solita Solano, Flanner was called "a defining force in the creative expat scene in Paris." She returned to New York during the war and split her time between there and Paris until her death in 1978. Early life Janet Flanner was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, to Frank and Mary Ellen Flanner (née Hockett), a child of Quakers. She had two sisters, Marie and Hildegarde Flanner. Her father co-owned a mortuary and ran the first c ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Germaine Godefroy
Germaine may refer to: Given name *Germaine Arnaktauyok (born 1946), Inuk printmaker, painter, and drawer *Germaine Cousin (1579-1601), French saint *Germaine Greer (born 1939), feminist writer and academic *Germaine Koh (born 1967), Malaysian-born Canadian artist *Germaine Lindsay (1985–2005), British-Jamaican Islamist suicide bomber *Germaine Pratt (born 1998), American football player *Germaine de Randamie (born 1984), Dutch kickboxer and mixed martial artist *Germaine Schnitzer (1888-1982), French-born American pianist *Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983), French composer Surname *Gary Germaine (born 1976), Scottish footballer Other uses *Germaine (olive), an olive grown in Corsica *SS Empire Adventure, a cargo ship which carried the name ''Germaine L D'' between 1924 and 1931 Places *Germaine, Aisne, France *Germaine, Marne, France See also * Germain (other) *Germane, a chemical compound *Germanus (other) *Jermaine (other) Jermaine Jermaine ( ) ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Marie-Louise Giraud
Marie-Louise Giraud (17 November 1903 – 30 July 1943) was a French abortionist who became one of the last women to be guillotined in France. Giraud was convicted in Vichy France and was executed for having performed 27 abortions in the Cherbourg area on 30 July 1943. Her story was dramatized in the 1988 film ''Story of Women'' directed by Claude Chabrol. Background Marie-Louise Giraud, at the age of 39, was guillotined on the morning of 30 July 1943, in the courtyard of the prison de la Roquette in Paris by executioner Jules-Henri Desfourneaux for having performed 27 abortions in the region of Cherbourg. She was the only faiseuse d'anges (French slang: literally "female maker of angels") to be executed for this reason. A man was also beheaded the same year for three abortions. Coming from a poor family, Giraud was married to a sailor, with whom she had two children. She worked as a domestic housekeeper and laundress. From the beginning of World War II, she also rented rooms to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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André Obrecht
André Obrecht (9 August 1899 – 30 July 1985) was the official executioner of France from 1951 until 1976. Early life Born in Paris on 9 August 1899, Obrecht was the nephew of the chief executioner Anatole Deibler. He learned of his uncle's job at ten, when a series of postcards depicting an execution were published in September 1909. Following the death of his own son, who was born only one month after Obrecht, Deibler had a fatherlike relationship with young André, and the affection between the two men never ceased. Career Executioner Obrecht joined the executioners' team on 4 April 1922, as second assistant. By day, he worked in a factory as a machine operator. He remained as second assistant until 1939, when Anatole Deibler died. Due to financial obligations Deibler's widow allowed Obrecht's cousin Jules-Henri Desfourneaux and not Obrecht to succeed Deibler despite her late husband's indication that he would prefer Obrecht as his successor. Obrecht subsequently too ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Communists
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange which allocates products to everyone in the society.: "One widespread distinction was that socialism socialised production only while communism socialised production and consumption." Communist society also involves the absence of private property, social classes, money, and the state. Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance, but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Executioner
An executioner, also known as a hangman or headsman, is an official who executes a sentence of capital punishment on a legally condemned person. Scope and job The executioner was usually presented with a warrant authorising or ordering him to ''execute'' the sentence. The warrant protects the executioner from the charge of murder. Common terms for executioners derived from forms of capital punishment—though they often also performed other physical punishments—include hangman (hanging) and headsman (beheading). In the military, the role of executioner was performed by a soldier, such as the ''provost''. A common stereotype of an executioner is a hooded medieval or absolutist executioner. Symbolic or real, executioners were rarely hooded, and not robed in all black; hoods were only used if an executioner's identity and anonymity were to be preserved from the public. As Hilary Mantel noted in her 2018 Reith Lectures, "Why would an executioner wear a mask? Everybody kne ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vichy Government
Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its territory occupied under harsh terms of the armistice, it adopted a policy of collaboration with Nazi Germany, which occupied the northern and western portions before occupying the remainder of Metropolitan France in November 1942. Though Paris was ostensibly its capital, the collaborationist Vichy government established itself in the resort town of Vichy in the unoccupied "Free Zone" (), where it remained responsible for the civil administration of France as well as its colonies. The Third French Republic had begun the war in September 1939 on the side of the Allies. On 10 May 1940, it was invaded by Nazi Germany. The German Army rapidly broke through the Allied lines by bypassing the highly fortified Maginot Line and invading through B ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |