|
David d'Angers
David d'Angers or Pierre-Jean David , 1788-1856, French sculptor. His works are numerous and present national figures, often nude, in statues, busts, reliefs, and medallions. The pediment of the Panthéon in Paris shows a group of distinguished Frenchmen receiving wreaths from the hand of ...
Read more
|
|
Dominique de Gourgues
Dominique de Gourgues , c.1530-1593, French soldier and adventurer. He served in the French army in Italy, was captured by the Spanish, then by the Turks, served as galley slave under both, and after his release led expeditions to Africa and South America. Stirred by the massacre (1565), by Pedro M...
Read more
|
|
devaluation
devaluation decreasing the value of one nation's currency relative to gold or the currencies of other nations. It is usually undertaken as a means of correcting a deficit in the balance of payments . Although devaluation occurs in terms of all other currencies, it is best illustrated in the case o...
Read more
|
|
Pierre Laval
Pierre Laval , 1883-1945, French politician. Elected (1914) to the chamber of deputies as a Socialist, he held various cabinet posts and in 1926 became a senator as an Independent, moving away from his leftist affiliations. In 1931-32 and 1935-36 he was premier and foreign minister. With Sir Samuel ...
Read more
|
|
Port-Royal
Port-Royal , former abbey of women, c.17 mi (27 km) W of Paris, founded in 1204. It was at first Benedictine, later Cistercian. In 1608 the abbess, Angélique Arnauld (see Arnauld , family), undertook a reform with the counsel of St. Francis de Sales. The nuns became renowned for piety, and t...
Read more
|
|
French Academy
French Academy ( L'Académie française ), learned society of France. It is one of the five societies of the Institut de France .
Development
The origins of the academy were in a coterie of literary men who met informally in Paris in the early 1630s to discuss rhetoric and cr...
Read more
|
|
Jean Ribaut
Jean Ribaut , c.1520-65, French mariner and colonizer in Florida, b. Dieppe. When Gaspard de Coligny decided to plant a French colony as an asylum for Huguenots in the New World, he appointed Ribaut to lead the expedition. Ribaut sailed from France in Feb., 1562, with five vessels carrying 150 colon...
Read more
|
|
airline industry
airline industry the business of transporting paying passengers and freight by air along regularly scheduled routes, typically by airplanes but also by helicopter.
Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin set up the first commercial airline in 1912, using a form of the dirigible to transport more than 34...
Read more
|
|
balloon
balloon lighter-than-air craft without a propulsion system, lifted by inflation of one or more containers with a gas lighter than air or with heated air. During flight, altitude may be gained by discarding ballast (e.g., bags of sand) and may be lost by releasing some of the lifting gas from its co...
Read more
|
|
Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle , 1890-1970, French general and statesman, first president (1959-69) of the Fifth Republic.
The World Wars
During World War I de Gaulle served with distinction until his capture in 1916. In The Army of the Future (1934, tr. 1941) he foresaw and futilely advocated for Fr...
Read more
|