The Bordereau That Tore France in Half
A torn-up scrap of paper from a German embassy wastebasket convicted the wrong man in 1894. France spent the next twelve years arguing about it.
Read the story →A country
France
6 stories set here.
The Explosion Ten Days After the Towers
On 21 September 2001 a fertilizer plant in Toulouse exploded with the force of a small nuclear bomb. France first assumed it was terrorism. It wasn't.
Read the story →The Mistress on Trial Twice
A decade after President Faure died in her arms, Marguerite Steinheil was charged with the murders of her mother and her husband. Paris had been waiting.
Read the story →The Strasbourg Pogrom of Saint Valentine's Day, 1349
Six weeks before the plague reached the city, the council of Strasbourg deposed its mayors, replaced them, and burned the city's Jewish community alive.
Read the story →The Summer Strasbourg Could Not Stop Dancing
In July 1518 a woman in Strasbourg began to dance in the street. By August several hundred people had joined her, and some of them had died of it.
Read the story →The French President Who Died on the Job
Félix Faure had ambitions of being Caesar. On a February afternoon in 1899, he became something else.
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