1908 in France

Events from the year 1908 in France.

Incumbents

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

Film

Literature

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
12 January – Jean Delannoy, actor, screenwriter and film director
26 January – Stéphane Grappelli, jazz violinist
31 January – Simonne Mathieu, tennis player
11 February – Pierre Hornus, footballer
12 February – Jean Effel, painter, illustrator and journalist
26 February – Jean-Pierre Wimille, motor racing driver and resistance member
27 February – Pierre Brunet, rowing coxswain and Olympic medallist
29 February – Balthus, artist
5 March – Christian Boussus, tennis player
8 March – Raymond Dronne, politician
14 March – Maurice Merleau-Ponty, phenomenological philosopher
20 March – Roger Trinquier, army officer
25 March – Henri Rochereau, politician and European Commissioner

April to June

9 April – Paula Nenette Pepin, composer, pianist and lyricist
12 April – André Martinet, linguist
21 April – Louis Hostin, weightlifter and Olympic champion
5 May – Jacques Massu, General
29 May – Pierre-Henri Teitgen, lawyer, professor and politician
30 May – André Cheuva, soccer player
2 June – Marcel Langiller, international soccer player

July to September

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

October to December

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

Full date unknown

Gilbert Degrémont, water treatment expert
Célestin Lainé, Breton nationalist and collaborator

Deaths

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