Henri Laurent Rivière (1827–1883) was a French naval officer and a writer who is chiefly remembered today for advancing the French conquest of Tonkin (northern Vietnam) in the 1880s. Rivière's seizure of the citadel of Hanoi in April 1882 inaugurated a period of undeclared hostilities between France and Dai Nam (as Vietnam was known then) that culminated one year later in the Tonkin campaign (1883–1886).
Antoine Louis Prosper "Frédérick" Lemaître (28 July 1800 – 26 January 1876) was a French actor and playwright, one of the most famous players on the celebrated Boulevard du Crime.
Jules-Émile Péan (29 November 1830 – 20 January 1898) was one of the great French surgeons of the 19th century.
Péan was born in 1830 in Marboué, french department of Eure-et-Loir. He studied at the college of Chartres and then studied medicine in Paris under Auguste Nélaton. He was appointed a doctor in 1861 and worked at St. Antoine and St. Louis up to 1893. He then created with its expenses the international hospital. He wrote two volumes of private clinics (1876 and 1890). He was elected to the French Académie Nationale de Médecine on November 22, 1887, and was awarded the rank of Commander of Legion of Honor in 1893. He died on January 20, 1898, in Paris. A street, Rue Péan, was named after him in Châteaudun, Cloyes-sur-le-Loir and Paris.
Péan was very admired and a follower of hygiene, he disputed the discoveries of Louis Pasteur. He refused to dissect corpses and operated preferably in residence. Although a teacher, he was never named professor. He was the first to make a successful surgical ablation of one cyst of the ovary in 1864. He was also a pioneer in performing a vaginal hysterectomy for carcinoma in 1890. He is believed to have performed the first surgery to correct diverticula of the bladder in 1895. In 1893, he attempted the first known total joint arthroplasty, operating on the shoulder of a French waiter; it had to be removed two years later due to infection. He popularized the hemostat that is still used in operating rooms around the world.
Jacques Rigaut (French pronunciation: [ʁiɡo]; 30 December 1898 – 9 November 1929) was a French surrealist poet. Born in Paris, he was part of the Dadaist movement. His works frequently talked about suicide and he came to regard its successful completion as his occupation. In 1929 at the age of 30, as he had announced, Rigaut shot himself, using a ruler to be sure the bullet would pass through his heart.He is buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre.
Rigaut's works include:
Agence Générale du Suicide
Et puis merde!
Papiers Posthumes
Lord PatchogueHis suicide inspired the book Will O' the Wisp by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle. The movie The Fire Within from Louis Malle is based on this book. The movie Oslo, August 31st directed by Joachim Trier, released in 2011, is also largely based on Will O' the Wisp although the narrative takes place in contemporary Norway. The Granada-based Spanish indie pop band Lori Meyers has a song entitled "La Vida de Jacques Rigaut" (The Life of Jacques Rigaut) with its lyrics relating with his life.
Louis-Aimé Maillart (March 24, 1817 – May 26, 1871) was a French composer, best known for his operas, particularly Les Dragons de Villars and Lara.
Francisque Sarcey (8 October 1827 – 16 May 1899) was a French journalist and dramatic critic.
Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (20 June 1786 – 23 July 1859) was a French poet and novelist.
She was born in Douai. Following the French Revolution, her father's business was ruined, and she traveled with her mother to Guadeloupe in search of financial help from a distant relative. Marceline's mother died of yellow fever there, and the young girl somehow made her way back to France. At age 16, back in Douai, she began a career on stage. In 1817 she married her husband, the "second-rate" actor Prosper Lanchantin-Valmore.She published Élégies et Romances, her first poetic work, in 1819. In 1821 she published the narrative work Veillées des Antilles. It includes the novella Sarah, a contribution to the genre of slave stories in France.Marceline appeared as an actress and singer in Douai, Rouen, the Opéra-Comique in Paris, and the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, where she notably played Rosine in Beaumarchais's Le Barbier de Séville. She retired from the stage in 1823. She later became friends with the novelist Honoré de Balzac, and he once wrote that she was an inspiration for the title character of La Cousine Bette.The publication of her innovative volume of elegies in 1819 marks her as one of the founders of French Romantic poetry. Her poetry is also known for taking on dark and depressing themes, which reflects her troubled life. She is the only female writer included in the famous Les Poètes maudits anthology published by Paul Verlaine in 1884. A volume of her poetry was among the books in Friedrich Nietzsche's library.
Maurice Albert Sinet (French pronunciation: [mɔʁis albɛʁ sine]; 31 December 1928 – 5 May 2016), known professionally as Siné (pronounced [sine]), was a French political cartoonist. His work is noted for its anti-capitalism, anti-clericalism, anti-colonialism, antisemitism, and anarchism.
Jacques Duby (7 May 1922 – 15 February 2012) was a French stage, film and television actor. He was born in Toulouse.
Paul Georges Dieulafoy (18 November 1839 – 16 August 1911) was a French physician and surgeon. He is best known for his study of acute appendicitis and his description of Dieulafoy's lesion, a rare cause of gastric bleeding.