| January 3 | A July 7, 1904 law barring members of religious orders from the teaching profession comes into force. |
| January 7 | Warwick Continental Trading an English company releases four newsreels of the Russo-Japanese War in Paris. |
| January 9 | Louise Michel, “the Red Virgin of the Paris Commune” dies at age 74. |
| January 12 | The Académie française discusses orthographic reform. |
| January 14 | Charles Maurras and Henri Vaugeois establish the monarchist Ligue de l'Action française. |
| January 19 | The Government of Premier Emile Combes falls in the wake of revelations that War Minister, General Louis André, has been compiling a card index of the political and religious opinions of all Army officers with the help of Free Mason advisors. |
| January 24 | Michel Rouvier is appointed Premier for the second time. |
| January 28 | The magazine Vie heureuse creates Le Fémina, a literary prize for women. A jury awards the 1904 prize to Myriam Harry for her novel La Conquête de Jérusalem (The Conquest of Jerusalem). |
| February 1 | Pathé laysoff 1,200 workers after a court orders an to the free recording of copywritten music. |
| February 4 | La Semaine de Suzette, an illustrated book for young girls featuring the adventures of a tiny Bretonne named Bécassine, is published. |
| February 12 | French aéronaute Jacques Faure and his cousin Hubert Latham land at Aubervilliers on the balloon Aéro-Club II. Their flight which began at London’s Crystal Palace is the first crossing of the English Channel by air. |
| March 1 | The Automobile Club de France urges the Government to limit road racing to one grand event per year. It believes that this should be sufficient to satisfy the interests of the automobile industry. |
| March 19 | French explorer the Marquis de Segonzac is held prisoner in Morocco. |
| March 21 | The Chamber of Deputies begins debate on the proposed separation of Church and State. |
| March 24 | Author Jules Verne dies at age 77 in Amiens. |
| March 27 | Pope Pius X condemns the future separation of Church and State in France. |
| March 31 | Kaiser Wilhelm visits Tangiers where he issues a statement supporting Moroccan independence to the irritation of France, Spain and Great Britain. |
| April 1 | The first telephone link between Paris and Berlin is established. |
| | The second volume of Romain Rolland’s novel Jean-Christophe is published. |
| April 8 | The Chamber of Deputies denies Departmental General Councils the right to comment on the proposed law separating Church and State. |
| April 16 | Limoges porcelain workers stage a general strike. |
| April 19 | Premier Rouvier declines Foreign Minister Théophile Delcassé’s offer to resign in the face of criticism over his Moroccan policy. |
| April 23 | The French Ministry of the Interior creates an Algerian Office. |
| April 26 | Socialists establish the French Section of the Workers International (SFIO - Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière). |
| April 29 | An earthquake rattles the Chamonix region. |
| April 30 | President Emile Loubet receives King Edward VII of England in Paris. |
| May 1 | Au service de l’Allemagne (In the Service of Germany) the first of two volumes in Maurice Barrès’ triology Les Bastions de l'Est is published in Paris by Fayard. |
| May 5 | La Cabrera, an opera by Gabriel Dupont, premiers in Paris. |
| May 13 | Dutch dancer Mata Hari triumphs in Paris. |
| May 26 | Financier Alphonse de Rothschild dies at age 78. |
| May 27 | The first military airfield in Europe opens at Chalais-Meudon. Captain Ferdinad Ferber makes a successful flight in his aéroplane No.6. |
| May 28 | The first bullfight on the Marne takes place at Chalons-sur-Marne. The Chalonnais Cycling Club rents its velodrome to the organizers. |
| May 31 | President Loubet and King Alphonso XIII of Spain survive an anarchist attack in Paris. |
| June 6 | Foreign Affairs Minister Théophile Delcassé resigns after seven years in the post. |
| June 7 | Doctor Jean Charcot returns from Antactica. |
| June 8 | Gabriel Voisin makes a 15 meter flight at an altitude of 150 meters in a floating glider he built with Ernest Archdeacon. The plane is lifted to takeoff from the Seine by a motorboat. |
| June 16 | Doctor Charcot reads a report on his expedition to the Antarctic before the Geographic Society at the Sorbonne. |
| June 27 | Legislation is enacted limiting the workday for miners to 8 hours. |
| June 30 | Edouard Branly conducts a conference on wireless telegraphy before an audience of 5,000 in Paris. |
| July 3 | The law separating Church and State is approved by the Chamber of Deputies on a 341 to 233 vote. Church buildings are declared public property. |
| July 8 | France accedes to the Sultan’s call for an international conference on the status of Morocco. |
| July 9 | A squadron of the Royal Navy pays an official visit to Brest. |
| July 12 | Théophile Delcassé reaffirms his hostility to a conference on Morocco. |
| July 13 | The first federation of teachers unions is established. |
| July 25 | A measles epidemic strikes France. |
| July 28 | Julia Bartet becomes the first comedienne to receive the Legion of Honor. |
| July | Louis Troussellier wins the third running of the Tour de France. Organizer Henri Desgranges considers cancellig the race after 125 kgs of nails strewn on the road prevents all but 15 of 60 riders from finishing the first stage but relents. René Pottier wins the Tour’s first mountain stage climbing the Ballon d'Alsace without dismounting but leaves the race with tendonitis. |
| August 25 | A tunnel beneath the Seine links the Paris Métro between Châtelet, Cité and Saint Michel stations. |
| | Félix Mesguich fulfills his longtime dream of filming the Vevey Wine Festival. He dispatches his newsreel to Paris at once beating the Urban Trading Company which held exclusive rights to film the event. |
| September 14 | Explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza dies in Dakar, Senegal at age 53 while returning to Paris from an administrative investigation in the French Congo. |
| September 28 | A Franco-German accord is reached on the status of Morocco after an international conference is scheduled. |
| | Press dispatches report that the Governor of the French Congo has tolerated unimaginable atrocities involving thousands of victims. |
| October 12 | Les Bas-Fonds (The Lower Depths), a play by Maxim Gorky premiers at the théâtre de l’œuvre in Paris. |
| October 16 | The Crown Prince of Bulgaria, Ferdinand of Saxe Coburg, makes and official visit to France. |
| October 20 | La Rafale (The Whirlwind), a play by Henry Bernstein, premiers at Le Gymnase in Paris. |
| October 28 | Author and humorist Alphonse Allais dies of a stroke at age 51 in Paris. |
| November 7 | Miarka, an opera by Jean Richepin and Alexandre Georges, premiers in Paris. |
| November 10 | The Minister of War, Maurice Berteaux, resigns following a tumultuous session of the Chamber of Deputies. |
| November 23 | The fleets of Austria-Hungary, Russia, Great Britain, France and Italy gather at Pireus, Greece in a show of force against Turkish policy in Macedonia. |
| December 6 | The Senate approves the law separating Church and State by a vote of 179 to 103. |
| December 9 | The law separating Church and State which abolishes the Concordat of 1801 is adopted and published in the Journal officiel. |
| December 26 | Twenty eight signatories of an anti-militarist petition are tried in Paris. Twenty six are convicted and fined. Several prison sentences are handed out. |
| | Les Pêcheurs de Saint-Jean, an opera by Charles Marie Widor, premiers in Paris.During the Year |
| | Voisin Brothers establishes the world’s first aircraft factory at Billancourt. |
| 1906 | January 1 | The law separating Church and State comes into full force. |
| January 6 | Miroirs, an orchestral work by Maurice Ravel, is prefomed for the first time in Paris. |
| January 7 | Senatorial elections uphold support for the governing coalition. The Socialists enter the Senate for the first time by electing two members from the Midi. |
| January 11 | Essayist, statesman and lawyer Étienne Lamy enters the Académie Française. |
| January 17 | The Algeciras Confernce on the status of Morocco opens. The special rights of France in Morocco are recognized over the opposition of Germany, Austria and Morocco. |
| | France and Venezuela sever diplomatic relations. |
| January 26 | Maurice Barrès enters the Académie française filling the seat left vacant by the death of José Maria de Heredia. |
| January 28 | French actress Sarah Bernhardt becomes the first woman to receive a gold medal from Harvard University. |
| January 31 | State authorities begin an inventory of Church property. |
| February 1 | The inventory of Church property provokes a number of incidents in Paris, most notably at Saint Clotilde and at Saint Pierre du Gros Caillou. |
| February 10 | The Charron-Girardot-Voigt factory delivers a 3 ton armored car to the Russian Army. |
| February 18 | Armand Fallières is elected President of the Republic over moderate Paul Doumer by a vote of 449 to 379. |
| February 23 | Jean Jaurès denounces the conduct of French policy at the Algeciras Confernce in a speech to the Chamber of Deputies. |
| February 27 | 1,400 people are arrested for disturbing the peace during the Paris Mardi Gras celebration. |
| March 1 | Le Bourgeon (The Bud), a comedy by Georges Feydeau, premiers in Paris. |
| March 6 | A Catholic is killed in a Church inventory disturbance at the village of Boeschepe in Flanders. |
| March 7 | The Government loses a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies. Premier Maurice Rouvier resigns. |
| March 10 | A coal mine accident at Courrières near Lens kills 1,060 miners. |
| March 14 | Jean Marie Ferdinand Sarrien is appointed Premier. |
| March 16 | Georges Clemenceau, the new Minister of the Interior, forbids the use of force in carrying out the Church property inventory. |
| March 18 | Romanian engineer Trajan Vuia makes a succeful flight of 12 meters in the first monoplane equipped with pneumatic tires from a field near Montesson. |
| March 22 | France loses its first rugby match against England 35 to 8 at the Parc des Princes, Paris. |
| March 27 | Aphrodite, an opera in five acts by Camille Erlanger, premiers in Paris. |
| April 1 | A High Council for National Defense is established. |
| April 7 | The Algeciras Confernce on Morocco closes. |
| April 14 | The first Colonial Exposition of Marseilles opens. |
| April 18 | La Griffe (The Claw), a play by Henry Bernstein, premiers in Paris. |
| April 19 | Physicist Pierre Curie dies at age 47. |
| May 1 | Interior Minister Georges Clemenceau mobilizes the Army to suppress May Day demonstrations organized by the Confédération Générale du Travail in Paris. The Prefect, Louis Lépine, orders several arrests including those of union directors Griffuehler and Monatte. |
| May 4 | President Armand Fallières receives King Edward VII of England in Paris. |
| May 30 | The Bishops of France meet in plenary session to discuss the law separating Church and State. |
| June 3 | The Paris métro’s No.5 line linking the Place d’Italie and the Gare d’Austerlitz is placed in service. |
| June 6 | The Paris city council calls for May Day to be made a public holiday. |
| June 11 | The Montmartre – Saint Germain des Prés transit route becomes the first in Paris served by gasoline powered buses. |
| June 21 | Jean Jaurès clashes with Clemenceau in the Chamber of Deputies over the use of troops to suppress socialist movements. The exchange marks the end of Socialist cooperation with the Government. |
| June 26 - 27 | Ferenc Szisz of Hungary wins the first Grand Prix of the Automobile Club de France driving a 90hp Renault. Only 11 of 32 starters finish the 64 mile circuit de la Sarthe at Le Mans. The race is a popular success but the sponsor, l’Automobile Club de la Sarthe, loses 75,000 francs.July 1 |
| | The King of Cambodia makes an official visit to Paris. |
| | Les Désenchantées, a novel by Pierre Loti, is published. |
| July 10 | The Senate passes a bill requiring a weekly day of rest. |
| July 12 | The War Council’s conviction of Alfred Dreyfus in an 1899 trial at Rennes is overturned. |
| July 13 | Alfred Dreyfus is promoted to commandant and awarded the Legion of Honor. |
| July | French scientist Paul Pelliot sets off on a two year scientific expedition from Russia to China following a route from Tashkent to Peking. |
| | René Pottier, the king of the climbers, wins four consecutive stages and finishes first in the Tour de France. The Tour makes its first “foreign” excursion passing through Metz in then German Lorraine. |
| August 10 | Pope Pius X issues Gravissimo Officii Munere, an encyclical addressed to the French bishops condemning the separation of Church and State. |
| August 11 | The first patent on a talking motion picture process is granted to Eugène Lauste. |
| August 30 | L’Eclipse, is formed as a French subsidiary of the English filmmaking concern Urban Trading Company.September 13 |
| | Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont begins testing his airplane No.14b in Paris. He rolls 150 meters before leaving the ground for a flight of 7 meters. |
| September 25 | Les associations cultuelles françaises formed to govern church parishes in accordance with law separating Church and State are declared schismatic by the bishops. |
| October 5 | Jean Jaurès’ L’Humanité receives 25,000 francs from the leader of the German Social Democratic Party, August Bebel. |
| October 13 | The Confédération Générale du Travail adopts a charter declaring its independence from political parties and religious sects at a meeting in Amiens. |
| October 19 | Premier Ferdinand Sarrien submits his resignation to President Fallières. |
| October 22 | Artist Paul Cézanne dies in Aix en Provence at age 67. |
| October 23 | Brazilian Alberto Santos Dumont makes a 60 meter flight at an altitude of 4 meters in his airplane 14b near the Pont de Puteaux. |
| October 25 | Georges Clemenceau (Radical Socialist) is appointed Premier and Minister of the Interior. René Viviani becomes Minister of Labor and of Social Welfare. |
| October 30 | Doctor Paul Poirier calls for the creation of cancer research institute. |
| November 1 | Essai sur les passions, a philosophical work by Théodule Ribot, is published. |
| November 2 | Miquette et sa mere (Miquette and Her Mother), a play by Robert de Flers et de Gaston de Caillavet, premiers in Paris at the théâtre des Variétés. |
| November 5 | Biribi, a play based on anarchist Georges Darien’s 1890 anti-militarist novel, premiers in Paris.November 8 |
| | The Chamber of Deputies approves the creation of Ministry of Labor. |
| November 9 | Armaillis, an opera by Gustave Doret, is performed in Paris. |
| November 14 | Les Mouettes (The Gulls), a play by Paul Adam, premiers in Paris. |
| November 22 | The Chamber of Deputies votes to raise the salary of deputies and senators from 9,000 to 15,000 francs per annum. |
| November 25 | The Paris-Monte Carlo automobile rally begins with 39 participants. |
| December 3 | Léon Gaumont incorporates his motion picture company with capital of 2,500,000 francs. |
| December 7 | Le Voleur (The Theif), a play by Henry Bernstein premiers in Paris. |
| December 8 | The Pope tells the French clergy to disregard the legal proscriptions on public meetings. |
| December 10 | Henri Moissan of the Sorbonne University is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry "in recognition of the great services rendered by him in his investigation and isolation of the element fluorine, and for the adoption in the service of science of the electric furnace called after him." |
| | The Government decides to sequester ecclesiatical property. |
| December 13 | France, Great Britain and Italy sign a treaty guaranting the independence of Ethopia. |
| December 15 | The Paris Metro’s No.5 line is extended from the Gare d’Austerlitz to Rue de Lancry. |
| December 20 | Statesman and jurist Alexandre Ribot enters the Académie française. |
| | La Fédération des salles d’armes et sociétés d’escrime de France (The French Fencing Federation) is established. |
| During the Year | Aristide Briand becomes Minister of Public Instruction and Religious Affairs. |
| | An Anglo-French condomium is established to govern the New Hebrides. |
| | 1,800 Hennebont steelworkers stage a 115 day strike. |
| 1907 | January 1 | A law mandating assistance to elderly indigents comes into effect. |
| January 2 | A law prohibiting the display of the Crucifix in school classrooms comes into effect. |
| January 3 | The Prefect of Police bans a performance by Colette and Mathilde de Morny at the Moulin-Rouge. |
| January 9 | Textile workers in Fougères go on strikes. |
| January 12 | The premier concert of Maurice Ravel’s Histoires naturelles receives triumphal acclaim in Paris. |
| January 17 | Maurice Barrés, essayist, novelist and politician, enters the Académie française. |
| January 20 | Skirmishs between troops and trade unionists erupt after Interior Minister Georges Clemenceau orders the closure of the Paris labor exchange. |
| February 1 | Professor Korn transmits a telephoto of President Fallières from Paris to Lyon. |
| February 7 | Joseph Caillaux introduces an income tax proposal in the Chamber of Deputies. |
| | François-Désiré Cardinal Mathieu, Archbishop of Toulouse, enters the Académie française. |
| February 8 | The 28th Salon of Women Painters and Sculptors opens at the Grand Palais, Paris. |
| February 9 | Doctor Payot, a Chamoix physician, organizes an international ski meet at Montgenèvre. Over 3,000 people attend the contests and the weekly magazine L'Illustration covers the event. |
| February 11 | Shoe makers return to work after a 100 day strike in Fougères. One worker was killed by a revolver shot. |
| March 2 | La Puce à l’oreille (A Flea in Her Ear), a play by Georges Feydeau, premiers in Paris at the Théâtre des Nouveautés. |
| March 9 | Paris electric utility employees strike for a day and a half with little effect. The majority of Parisians still light with gas. |
| March 11 | Former President Jean Casimir-Périer dies in Paris at age 60. |
| March 12 | An accidental explosion on the cruiser Iéna, anchored at Toulon, kills 118 people. |
| March 18 | Renowned chemist Marcelin Berthelot dies at age 80. |
| March 21 | The British Government reiterates its opposition to construction of a tunnel under the English Channel. |
| April 4 | The Government introduces legislation according civil servants the right to organize. |
| April 11 | Paris bakers go on strike and are followed by café waiters a short time later. |
| April 15 | The Pope condemns the separation of Church and State in France. |
| April 17 | La Légende du point d’Argentan, an opera by Félix Fourdrain, premiers in Paris. |
| April 29 | Georges Clemenceau orders an end to the Paris bakery strike and mobilizes the police in anticipation of May Day demonstrations. |
| May 1 | A Russian anarchist, Jacob Law, is arrested in Paris after firing several shots at troops dispersing a demonstration. |
| | L’Evolution créatrice (Creative Evolution) by philosopher Henri Bergson is published. |
| May 3 | Paris strikers return to work victorious. The café waiters win the right to wear moustaches. |
| May 8 | Salomé by Richard Strauss is performed at the Petit Théâtre de Paris. |
| May 11 | France and Germany sign an accord on the protection of intellectual property. |
| May 12 | Marcelin Albert leads a demonstration by 15,000 Languedoc vineyard owners protesting price cutting by vintiners at Béziers. |
| | Author Joris-Karl Huysmans dies at age 59 in Paris. |
| May 26 | 200,000 people demonstrate in Carcassonne to protest price cutting by wine producers in Carcassonne. |
| May 27 | King Haakon VII of Norway begins and official visit to Paris. |
| May 29 | American aviator Wilbur Wright arrives in Paris. |
| May 31 | Merchant seamen in Marseille launch a general strike in support of demands for higher pay and better working conditions. |
| June 5 | Fortunio, an opera by André Messager, premiers in Paris. |
| June 9 | Marcellin Albert, leader of the vineyard operators, calls for a tax strike at gathering of 500,000 vineyard workers in Montpellier. |
| June 10 | France and Japan sign a convention affirming their support of an “open door” policy in China. The first long distance rally for automobiles departs Paris for Peking. The race is organized by the Paris daily Le Matin. |
| | Auguste Lumière demonstrates a color photographic process developed in collaboration with his brother Louis. |
| | The Holy Family, a Rubens from the Thirion Collection, is sold at auction in Paris for 59,000 francs. |
| June 14 | King Frederick VIII of Denmark begins an official visit to Paris. |
| June 20 | Georges Clemenceau, “the first cop of France” sends troops to crush the vineyard revolt. The soldiers of the 139th Regiment open fire on the vineyard operators at Narbonne killing four. Two battalions of the 17th Infantry Regiment at Agde refuse to obey the orders of their Colonel.Maurice Berthet establishes a world indoor cycling record by traveling 41.52 kilometers in an hour. |
| June 29 | A law against wine fraud brings a measure of appeasement to the conflict. |
| July 1 | Arsène Lupin Gentleman Cambrioleur (Burgler), a novel by Maurice Leblanc, is published. |
| | Georrges Méliès releases a new science fiction film entitled le Tunnel sous la Manche ou le Cauchemar franco-anglais (The Tunnel beneath the English Channel or the Anglo-French Nightmare). |
| July 7 | Frenchmen ride to victory at the world cycling championships, Friol in speed and Darragon overall. |
| July 13 | Legislation is enacted allowing married women to dispose of their property. |
| July 14 | Lucien Petit-Breton of France coasts to victory in the Tour de France after race leader Emile Georget is penalized for changing bicycles in mid-tour. |
| August 7 | The Quai d’Orsay delivers a note to the signatories of the Algeciras Pact informing them that France and Spain will ensure order in Morocco. |
| August 10 | Prince Scipione Borghèse wins the Peking-Paris automobile race. He crosses the finishline at the Porte de Vincennes in an Itala motorcar 62 days after departing the Chinese capital. |
| August 15 | King Chulalongkorn of Thailand begins an official visit to Paris. |
| August 21 | American aviator Wilbur Wright takes off from the Camp d’Auvours airfield placed at his disposal by the Army. |
| September 1 | La Société du gaz de Paris replaces la Compagnie du gaz as the capital’s public utility operator.Léon Blum publishes his book Du marriage which causes a scandal with its recommendation of premarital conjugal experimentation. |
| September 6 | Poet and Nobel Laureate Rene Sully Prudhomme dies at age 68. |
| September 17 | After a flight of 184 meters, Louis Blériot crash lands his aéroplane VI at a speed inexcess of 80 Km/h and is lifted 15 meters off the ground. |
| September 21 | A resumption of hostilities in Morocco seems imminent. The consul of France, M. Regnault, affirms in a speech that, “the Government of the French Republic desires to pacify the region in cooperation with the Spanish Government but nothing more than necessary to impose peace on those who dared to massacre and plunder and call upon fanatics to destroy civilization.”Louis Bréguet and Charles Richet introduce their gyroplane at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences in Paris. |
| September 22 | La Confédération générale des vignerons (General Confederation of Vinters) is established. |
| October 1 | The first issue of Comeda, a daily journal dedicated to the theatre and the arts, appears. |
| October 12 | A lighted panel displays the time from the Eiffel Tower. |
| October 15 | Henri Farman breaks Brazilian Alberto Santos - Dumont’s European record for distance flown with a flight of 380 meters.October 26 |
| | Henri Farman makes a flight of 771 meters in 52 seconds. |
| November 1 | Author Alfred Jarry dies at age 34. |
| November 6 | Samson, a play by Henry Bernstein, premiers in Paris. |
| | Le Chemineau, an operetta by Jean Richepin and Xavier Leroux, premiers in Paris. |
| December 2 | Morocco signs a convention with France and Spain to implement the Algeciras agreements. |
| December 7 | L’Affaire des poisons, a drama in five acts by Victorien Sardou, premiers in Paris.A blast of compressed air collapses a caisson and kills five workers constructing an extention of the Paris métro to Cité station. |
| December 10 | Louis Renault, Professor of International Law at the Sorbonne, is awarded a share of the Nobel Peace Prize. |
| | Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran of the Pasteur Institute is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, "in recognition of his work on the role played by protozoa in causing diseases." |
| December 19 | Playwright Maurice Donnay enters the Académie française. |
| December 24 | A permanent movie screen is installed at the Cirque d’Hiver, Paris, in a room decorated by the architect Malo, by owner Charles Pathé.The director of the Opéra de Paris decides to seal recordings of the greatest singers in one of the walls for 200 years. |
| December 31 | American aviator américain Wilbur Wright is awarded the Michelin Cup for distance flying. Later that evening Wright gives Minister Louis Barthou his first airplane ride. |
| 1908 | January 1 | Bicycles are required to display license plates henceforth. |
| January 3 | Fifty travelers are arrested following a protest against conditions at Paris’ Gare Saint Lazare. |
| January 8 | An exposition of Van Gogh’s works is staged at la galerie Bernheim, Paris. |
| January 12 | The first long distance radiotelegraphic is transmitted from the Eiffel Tower. |
| January 16 | Historian Pierre de Ségur enters the Académie française. |
| January 22 | Edouard Bélin demonstrates the Bélinograph, his device fro transmitting photographs by telegraph. A photograph is transmitted from Paris to Lyon and Bordeaux and back to Paris, a distance of 1,700 kilometers in 22 minutes. |
| Janaury 27 | Un divorce, a play by Paul Bourget, premiers in Paris. |
| January 29 | The Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal de la Vergne, dies at age 69. |
| February 8 | The Great New York to Paris Automobile Race departs Times Square, New York City before a cheering crowd of over 250,000 people. National teams from France, Italy, Germany and the United States enter the contest sponsored by the New York Times and Le Matin of Paris. |
| February 15 | The Archbishop of Paris, acting on instructions from the Pope, attacks the Modernist movement in the preson of Alfred Loisy who is prohibited from publishing his latest works. |
| February 20 | Henri Barboux who gained fame as attorney for Ferdinand de Lesseps during the Panama Canal scandal enters the Académie française. |
| February 21 | Pathé opens the Cinéma Métropole, featuring the world’s largest screen, in a converted Paris circus on the Avenue La Motte Picquet. |
| February 24 | The Moroccan Question dominates the parliamentary milieu. French forces have suffered 12 dead and 53 wounded in the preceding 18 days. Deputies demand that the Government either engage militarily or bring the troops home. |
| February 27 | La Femme nue (The Nude Woman), a play by Henry Bataille, premiers in Paris. |
| February 29 | Ramuntcho, a play based on the novel by Pierre Loti, is presented at the théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris. |
| March 2 | Gabriel Lippmann introduces his new process of relief photography before a meeting of the Academy of Sciences. |
| March 4 | The French Government delivers a note to the signatories of the Algeciras Accord announcing its intention to dispatch troops to pacify the Chaouia region of Morocco. |
| March 7 | Catholic philosopher Alfred Croissy is excommunicated for his essay Simple Reflexions on the Lamentabili Decree and the Pascendi Encyclical. |
| March 13 | The first automatic vending machines dispensing stamps and letter cards are installed at the Paris post office. |
| March 15 | Maurice Ravel’s Spanish Rapsody is performed for the first time in Paris. |
| March 19 | Jean Jaurès and Maurice Barrès engage in a sharp debate before the Chamber of Deputies over transfer of Emile Zola’s ashes to the Panthéon. |
| March 28 | Léon Delagrange pilots the first airplane flight to carry a passenger. He takes Henri Farman for a ride on his Voisin. |
| April 4 | Edouard De Max organizes a recital of poems by 19 year old Jean Cocteau at the Théâtre Fémina. |
| April 6 | The Masonry Contractors Federation institutes a lockout in an effort to break a strike by Paris building tradesmen. |
| April 9 | The Offenstadt brothers begin publication of L’Epatant, an illustrated journal that gains fame through its publication of Louis Forton’s Pieds Nickelés (Nickled Feet) series. |
| May 1 | The suffragette movement strikes Paris. Jeanne Laloë, a reporter for Le Matin, decides seek office in the municipal elections. |
| | The lockout of Paris stonemasons ends. |
| May 8 | General Lyautey is named High Commissioner of the Government to Morocco. |
| May 14 | The Prince of Wales opens the Anglo-French Exposition at White City, London. |
| May 17 | The Prefect of Paris issues a writ barring organ players from the streets. |
| May 19 | Fédor Chaliapine sings Boris Godounov at the Opéra de Paris. |
| May 25 | President Fallières pays a visit to the Anglo-French Exposition organized in the spirit of the Entente Cordiale at London. |
| June 2 | A clash between police and gravel pit workers who have been on strike for a month leaves two people dead at Draveil. |
| June 4 | Emile Zola’s ashes are transferred to the Panthéon. Captain Alfred Dreyfus is wounded in the arm by two gunshots during the ceremony. |
| June 6 | A new law eases divorce procedures. After three years of judicial separation the court may issue a final decree at the request of one spouse. |
| June 7 | Reims hosts a running of the bulls for the second and last time. |
| June 15 | President Fallières unveils a dinosaur skeleton found in Wyoming in 1902 at the Paris Museum of Natural History. |
| June 25 | French Equatorial Africa is constituted to administer the colonies in Central and West Africa. |
| June 26 | The Senate approves a Government purchase of the western railway. |
| June 29 | Physicist Henri Becquerel is elected Secretary for Life of the Academy of Sciences. |
| June | Katie Gillou Fenwick wins her fourth French Open tennis championship. |
| July 6 | Henri Farman wins the 10,000 franc Armengaud Prize for a flight in excess of a quarter hour at Issy-les-Moulineaux. Louis Blériot enters his monoplane in the contest but remains airborne for only 8 minutes 23 seconds. |
| July 8 | Léon Delagrange, on tour in Milan, carries the first woman airplane passenger, Frenchwoman Thérèse Peltier. |
| July 13 | The Chamber of Deputies tables a bill to abolish the death penalty. |
| July 15 | A judgement of the first chamber of the Paris lawcourts extends the laws protecting artistic property to the cinéma. |
| July 18 | German Christian Lautenschläger wins the Grand Prix de l’Automobile Club de France in a Mercedes. |
| July 26 | The German Protos is the first car to cross the finish line of the Great New York to Paris Automobile Race but is penalized 30 days because it had been shipped by rail from Salt Lake to Seattle for repairs before rejoining the competition in Vladivostok. |
| July 30 | The Great New York to Paris Automobile Race is won by George Schuster of Buffalo, New York who arrives at the offices of Le Matin on the Boulevard Poissoniere in Paris 169 days after leaving New York. The speedometer of his 1907 Thomas Flyer is broken but it is estimated that the vehicle has travel 13,341 miles. |
| | The Army suppresses a demonstration by strikeing building tradesmen at Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. Four people are killed and hundreds are wounded. |
| July | Lucien Petit-Breton becomes the first man to win consecutive victories in the Tour de France. |
| August 1 | Six directors of the Confédération Générale du Travail are arrested. |
| August 3 | The Confédération Générale du Travail’s call for a general strike is ignored. The striking gravel pit workers at Draveil return to work.August 10 |
| | The Chamber of Deputies approves a ban on civil service strikes. |
| August 15 | Doctor Jean Charcot departs on another expediton to the Antarctic. |
| | The first issue of the weekly Ciné-Journal appears. |
| August 17 | An animated cartoon, directed by Emile Cohl, is shown in Paris for the first time. |
| August 25 | Physicist Henri Becquerel dies at age 56. |
| August 30 | A hydraulic elevator is placed in service at the National Library. |
| September 14 | The French and Spanish Governments deliver a note conditioning their recognition of the Moulay Hafiz as Sultan of Morocco on his respect of the Algeciras Accords. |
| September 25 | A Franco-German incident takes place off Casablanca where deserters from the Foreign Legion embark by boat with the assistance of the German consulate. |
| October 1 | L’Ile des pingouins (Island of Penguins) by Anatole France and Illusions du progress (Illusions of Progress) by Georges Sorel are published.October 10 |
| | Paul Painlevé accompanies Wilbur Wright on an 80 kilometer airplane flight. |
| October 12 | The First International Highway Congress is held in Paris. Discussions center on the need to install road signs, establish a driving code and the paving of the roads. |
| October 19 | Théophile Delcassé launches an attack on the Naval Minister in the Chamber of Deputies. Five ships and two submarines have been lost in the preceeding three years. Navy Minister Gaston Thomson resigns and is replaced by Alfred Picard. |
| October 29 | A new airship, the Clément-Bayard, flies around Paris at an altitude of 220 meters. |
| October 30 | Henri Farman completes the first city to city airplane flight in history from Camp de Châlons at Bouy to Reims. He covers the 27 kilometers in 20 minutes at an altitude of 50 meters at an average speed of 81 km/h. |
| November 6 | La Patronne, a play by Maurice Donnay, premiers in Paris. |
| November 8 | Playwright Victorien Sardou dies at age 77. |
| November 15 | The first issue of André Gide and Jacques Copeau’s Nouvelle Revue française appears.November 17 |
| | Election of women to industrial tribunals is permitted. |
| | Le Film d’Art, Paul Lafitte’s company, presents its first production, l’Assassinat du duc de Guise (The Murder of the Duke of Guise) at la salle Charras, Paris. |
| December 10 | The Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to Gabriel Lippmann of the Sorbonne, "for his method of reproducing colours photographically based on the phenomenon of interference." |
| December 13 | Joan of Arc is beatified by Pope Pius X. |
| December 15 | A railway accident in Hérault kills thirty people. |
| December 24 | A clash between police and medical students in the Latin Quarter of Paris ends with 56 arrests. |
| During the Year | Jeanne Loloë receives nearly a quarter of the vote cast in the Paris municipal election. Her votes are considered nul and void. |
| | Lenin begins a temporary sojourn in Paris. |
| 1909 | January 3 | Moulay Hafiz is officially recognized as Sultan of Morocco by the great powers of Europe. |
| January 9 | Ricardo Vines gives the first performance of Maurice Ravel's Gaspard de Nuit. |
| January 20 | The atmosphere in the Latin Quarter remains tense in the wake of clashes between nationalists and republicans. |
| January 27 | Actor Constant Coquelin dies at age 68. |
| January 28 | Mathematician and astronomer Henri Poincare enters the Academie Francaise. |
| February 1 | La Nouvelle Revue Francaise publishes extracts from La Porte Etroite (The Narrow Door) by Andre Gide. |
| February 2 - 4 | The first International Congress of Film Producers meets in Paris under the presidency of Georges Melies. |
| February 8 | The death mask of Napoleon which had been missing since the American Civil War, is returned to the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans. |
| February 9 | Quo Vadis?, an opera by Jean Nouges, premiers in Nice. |
| February 18 | Poet, novelist and playwright Jean Richepin enters the Academie Francaise. Maurice Barres delivers the reception speech. |
| February 19 | Mistinguett makes her comic debut in L'Ane de Buridan, a play by Robert de Flers and Gaston de Caillavet. |
| March 1 | The Paris metro's No. 6 line linking the Place d'Italie and Nation and an escalator in the Pere Lachaise station are placed in service. |
| | Claude Farrere's new bookstore, La Bataille, is a grand success. |
| March 3 | Paul Langevin is appointed to the College de France. |
| March 17 | Postal employees go on strike. Foremen, telegraphers and other employees threatened with dismissal stage a slowdown to avoid disciplinary measures. |
| March 20 | France wins its first rugby match against Ireland 19 to 8 in Dublin. |
| March | Six hundred striking postal workers are fired. |
| April 3 | L'Imperatrice (The Empress), the last work by Catulle Mendes, premiers in Paris. |
| April 6 | Composer Paul Dukas is appointed to the Paris Conservatory. |
| April 17 | The one way street is adopted in the French traffic code. |
| April 20 | L'Aero Club de France is declared a public utility. |
| April 28 | The Merry Widow, a Viennese operetta by Franz Lehar, premiers in Paris. |
| May 3 | Louis Barthou is injured during a rapid balloon landing. |
| May 14 | The Chamber of Deputies rejects a measure giving civil servants the right to strike by a vote of 454 to 65. |
| May 18 | Paris hosts Les Ballets Russes for the first time. Madamoiselle Karsavina and Vaslav Ninjinsky draw packed audiences. |
| May 23 | The Port Aviation aerodrome at Viry Chatillon near Juvisy is inaugurated in the presence of 20,000 spectators. |
| May 27 | Novelist Marcel Prevost is elected to the Academie Francaise. |
| May 29 | Luna Park opens. The Porte Maillot amusement park remains open until midnight and charges 1 franc for admission. |
| June 1 | The District Attorney of the Seine declares the postal workers union illegal and orders it dissolved. |
| June 2 | Les Sylphides, a ballet based on a work by Chopin, is presented in Paris. |
| June 11 | The Chamber of Deputies approves a bill to reform military justice. |
| | A violent earthquake shakes Provence killing 49 people, injuring 43,200 and damaging numerous buildings. |
| June 12 | Louis Bleriot the first airplane flight with two passengers, Alberto Santos-Dumont and André Fournier, in his monoplane No. XII. |
| June 25 | Bacteriologist Charles Nicolle discovers the agent of transmission for typhus, the louse. |
| July 2 | L'Aero Club de France establishes a code for aerial navigation. |
| July 8 | General Gaston Gallifet dies at age 79. |
| July 11 | The Conference of CGT Labor Halls sees a rupture between reformists and anarchists. |
| July 13 | The Senate approves a telephone convention with Germany. |
| | The protecting powers in Crete (Great Britain, France, Russia and Italy) inform the Ottoman Empire that they will maintain their prerogatives despite the withdrawal of their forces. |
| July 15 | Doctor Alexis Carrel holds a conference on organ transplantation carried out on animals at Paris. |
| July 19 | Hubert Latham attempts to cross the English Channel by airplane ditches in the sea after 18 kilometers. |
| July 20 | Premier Georges Clemenceau resigns in the face of opposition to his Moroccan policy. |
| July 24 | Aristide Briand becomes Premier after Georges Clemenceau loses a vote of no confidence by a margin of 212 to 176. |
| July 25 | Louis Bleriot becomes the first person to successfully cross the English Channel in an airplane. He departs Calais at 4:35 a.m. in a Bleriot XI, a 25 horsepower monoplane of his own design and lands at Dover Castle 37 minutes later to claim the £1,000 prize offered by the London Daily Mail. |
| July 28 | 100,000 Parisians escort Bleriot from the Gare du Nord to the Champs Elysees. |
| July 30 | Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra pay an official visit to France. |
| July | François Faber of Luxembourg becomes the first foreigner to win the Tour de France and the only rider ever to win 5 consecutive stages. |
| August 5 | Georges Duchemin is the first man to executed in France since 1899. |
| August 8 | A railway accident in Longjumeau kills 12 people. |
| August 23 | The Clement Bayard dirigeable crashes in the Seine. |
| August 28 | La Grande Semaine d'Aviation (Reims International Air Meet) is the scene of a number of historic achievements. American Glenn Curtiss wins the James Gordon Bennett Cup and $5,000 for the fastest average speed flown over a 20 kilometer closed course. Henri Farman wins the distance competition by fly 111.8 miles in 3 hours 4 minutes and 56 seconds. Hubert Latham wins the altitude competition by climbing to height of 155 meters. |
| September 1 | General Tremeau is named Chief of Staff replacing General Henri de Lacroix. |
| September 7 | Eugene Lefevre is the first aviator killed while flying over Europe. His French built Wright Flyer type A crashes at 6:45 p.m. on test flight near Juvisy. |
| September 14 | French bishops condemn the intolerance of public schools towards Christian ideas. |
| September 28 | A fifty hectare golf course opens at Chantilly. |
| October 7 | General Albert d'Amade tells an interviewer that Spain threatens the French position in Morocco. |
| November 1 | The Chamber of Deputies supports formation of a colonial army of 100,000 Black soldiers who could be mobilized for service in a European conflict. |
| November 3 - 13 | Meg Steinheil's week long trial on charges that she murdered her mother and her husband, painter Adolphe Steinheil, ends in an acquittal. |
| November 15 | Paul Painleve teaches the first class at l'Ecole superieur d'aeronautique (School of Aeronautics) in Paris. |
| November 17 | The premier performance of Richard Wagner's Das Rhinegold is given in Paris. |
| November 19 | Hubert Latham sets a new altitude record by flying to 410 meters over the Chalons military camp. |
| November 28 | The Chamber of Deputies enacts a law authorizing pregnant women to interrupt their work for eight weeks without risking dismissal. |
| December 7 | La Danseuse de Delphes, first in a series of preludes for piano by Claude Debussy, is performed for the first time in Paris. |
| December 8 | Classes are suspended at the University of Paris Law Faculty after clashes between police and students. |
| December 9 | Raymond Poincare enters the Academie Francaise. |
| December 10 | Senator Paul Henri Benjamin Balluet d'Estrournelles de Constant is awarded a share of the Nobel Peace Prize for his work as founder and President of the French parliamentary group for voluntary arbitration and founder of the Committee for the Defense of National Interests and International Conciliation. |
| December 13 | The first measures to regulate the flow of traffic are implemented in Paris. |
| December 23 | Poet, novelist and dramatic actor Jean Aicard enters the Academie Francaise. Pierre Loti delivers the reception speech. |
| December 25 | Franco-Moroccan Accord – The Sultan authorizes the presence of several French regiments on his soil in return for a loan of 101,000,000 francs.December 29 |
| | Le Danseur inconnu (The Unknown Dancer), a play by Tristan Bernard, premiers in Paris. |
