1908 in France

Incumbents

• President: Armand Fallières
• President of the Council of Ministers: Georges Clemenceau

Events

• 12 January – A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.
• 21 March – Henri Farman pilots the first passenger flight.

Arts

• Pierre Bonnard - Nu à contre-jour
• Georges Braque
  • Le Compotier
  • Maisons à l'Estaque
• Raoul Dufy - Arbres à L'Estaque
• Roger de La Fresnaye - Allée des Acacias in the Bois de Boulogne
• Henri Matisse
  • Les Baigneuses à la tortue
  • La Desserte rouge
  • Les Joueurs de boules
  • Portrait de Greta Moll
• Jean Metzinger - Baigneuses
• Claude Monet
  • Le Palais Ducal vu de Saint-Georges Majeur
  • Le Grand Canal
  • Le Palais Ducal

Film

• Charles le Bargy & André Calmettes - L'Assassinat du duc de Guise
• Albert Capellani - L'Arlésienne
• Segundo de Chomón - Excursion dans la lune
• Émile Cohl - Fantasmagorie
• Georges Méliès
  • Le Mariage de Thomas Poirot
  • La Toile d'araignée merveilleuse
  • La Photographie électrique à distance
  • Le Nouveau Seigneur du village
  • Hallucinations pharmaceutiques ou le Truc du potard

Literature

• Henri Barbusse - L'Enfer
• Anatole France - L'île des Pingouins
• Jean de La Hire - La Roue fulgurante
• Maurice Leblanc - Arsène Lupin versus Herlock Sholmes
• Gaston Leroux - Le parfum de la dame en noir
• Maurice Renard - Le Docteur Lerne, sous-dieu

Music

• Isaac Albéniz - Iberia, Livre 4
• Claude Debussy
  • Children's Corner
  • Images, 2e série
• Gabriel Fauré - Sérénade, Op. 98
• Jules Massenet - Espada
• Gabriel Pierné - Ramuntcho
• Maurice Ravel - Rapsodie espagnole
• Camille Saint-Saëns - L'Assassinat du duc de Guise

Sport

• 13 July – Tour de France begins.
• 9 August – Tour de France ends, won by Lucien Petit-Breton.

Births

January to March

• 9 January – Simone de Beauvoir, author and philosopher (died 1986)
• 12 January – Jean Delannoy, actor, screenwriter and film director (died 2008)
• 26 January – Stéphane Grappelli, jazz violinist (died 1997)
• 31 January – Simonne Mathieu, tennis player (died 1980)
• 11 February – Pierre Hornus, footballer (died 1995)
• 12 February – Jean Effel, painter, illustrator and journalist (died 1982)
• 26 February – Jean-Pierre Wimille, motor racing driver and resistance member (died 1949)
• 27 February – Pierre Brunet, rowing coxswain and Olympic medallist (died 1979)
• 29 February – Balthus, artist (died 2001)
• 5 March – Christian Boussus, tennis player (died 2003)
• 8 March – Raymond Dronne, politician (died 1991)
• 14 March – Maurice Merleau-Ponty, phenomenological philosopher (died 1961)
• 20 March – Roger Trinquier, army officer (died 1986)
• 25 March – Henri Rochereau, politician and European Commissioner (died 1999)

April to June

• 9 April – Paula Nenette Pepin, composer, pianist and lyricist (died 1990)
• 12 April – André Martinet, linguist (died 1999)
• 21 April – Louis Hostin, weightlifter and Olympic champion (died 1998)
• 5 May – Jacques Massu, General (died 2002)
• 29 May – Pierre-Henri Teitgen, lawyer, professor and politician (died 1997)
• 30 May – André Cheuva, soccer player (died 1989)
• 2 June – Marcel Langiller, international soccer player (died 1980
• 12 June – Henri Rol-Tanguy, communist and leader in the French Resistance (died 2002)

July to September

• 2 July – Léon Arthur Elchinger, Bishop of Strasbourg (died 1998)
• 5 July – Henri, comte de Paris, Orléanist claimant to the French throne (died 1999)
• 12 July – Alain Cuny, actor (died 1994)
• 25 July – Robert-Ambroise-Marie Carré, priest and author (died 2004)
• 5 August – Shlomo Pines, French-born Israeli scholar of Jewish and Islamic philosophy (died 1990)
• 18 August – Edgar Faure, politician, essayist, historian, and memoirist (died 1988)
• 22 August – Henri Cartier-Bresson, photographer (died 2004)
• 28 August – Robert Merle, novelist (died 2004)
• 2 September – Fania Fénelon, pianist, composer and cabaret singer (died 1983)
• 8 September – Luc Étienne (Périn), writer (died 1984).
• 19 September – Paul Bénichou, writer, critic and literary historian (died 2001)
• 19 September – Robert Lecourt, jurist, fourth President of the European Court of Justice (died 2004)
• 25 September – Jacqueline Audry, film director (died 1977)
• 25 September – Roger Beaufrand, Olympic gold medal-winning cyclist (died 2007)

October to December

• 30 October – Marcel Béalu, writer (died 1993)
• 1 November – Sylvia Bataille, actress (died 1993)
• 4 November – Pauline Trigère, fashion designer (died 2002)
• 6 November – Françoise Dolto, physician and psychoanalyst (died 1988)
• 16 November – Emmanuelle Cinquin, religious sister (died 2008)
• 19 November – Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur, organist and composer (died 2002)
• 24 November – Simone de la Chaume, golfer (died 2001).
• 10 December – Olivier Messiaen, composer, organist and ornithologist (died 1992)
• 17 December – Raymond Louviot, cyclist (died 1969)
• 31 December – Pauline de Rothschild, fashion icon and tastemaker (died 1976)

Full date unknown

• Gilbert Degrémont, water treatment expert (died 1974)
• Célestin Lainé, Breton nationalist and collaborator (died 1983)

Deaths

• 29 January – François-Marie-Benjamin Richard, Archbishop of Paris (born 1819)
• 13 April Victor André Cornil, pathologist (born 1837)
• 7 May – Ludovic Halévy, author and playwright (born 1834)
• 14 August – Jules Liégeois, jurist, member of the Nancy School of Hypnosis (born 1833)
• 25 August – Henri Becquerel, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1852)
• 14 November – Denis Jean Achille Luchaire, historian (born 1846)
• 20 November – Marie-Louis-Antoine-Gaston Boissier, classical scholar (born 1823)
• 27 November – Jean Albert Gaudry, geologist and palaeontologist (born 1827)
• 5 December – Ernest Hébert, painter (born 1817)
• Full date unknown – Jacques-Eugène Feyen, painter (born 1815)

References

References

1. Terry Keefe. (20 April 1998). "Simone De Beauvoir". Macmillan International Higher Education.
2. Raymond Horricks. (21 August 1985). "Stephane Grappelli". Da Capo Press.