Curated playlist
Prefectures in France
- NîmesBlue jeans get the name of their fabric, denim, from the French city of Nîmes. It comes from "Serge de Nimes."
- NiceNice fires a cannon at noon so citizens eat lunch on time. It has done so since 1860.
- LyonIn 1793, France's government stripped Lyon of its name and renamed it Commune-Affranchie.
- GrenobleCitizens of Grenoble pelted royal troops with roof tiles in 1788. It helped ignite the French Revolution.
- StrasbourgA wrong label on a French map cost Strasbourg 7,000 early printed books. German guns hit the library in 1870.
- Valence, DrômePope Pius VI died in exile in the French city of Valence. He never made it back to Rome.
- AjaccioNapoleon returned to Ajaccio to seize its citadel from royalists, and his mission failed.
- BourgesBourges is a commune on the river Yèvre in central France, and its recorded story opens with a plea. In 52 BC, the sixth year of the Gallic Wars, the Gauls were burning their own towns so that Julius Caesar's army would find nothing to…
- ToulonOn November 27, 1942, French officers sank their own fleet at Toulon. German forces were closing in.
- ParisParis has twenty districts that spiral clockwise because Napoleon III annexed nearby towns in 1860.