It happened on 22 September
Born at the Pavillon de l’Érable, in Bel-Ébat Park
On 22 September 1907, René Nicoly was born at the Pavillon de l’Érable, in the grounds of the Bel-Ébat estate in Avon. His father worked there as a manager for the music publishers Durand, who hosted Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Dukas and Ravel at their premises.
Having become head of the orchestra department at Durand, he began organising concerts with commentary for young people as early as 1939. The Jeunesses Musicales de France was established as an association following the Liberation. In the 1950s, they had nearly two hundred thousand members and organised more than a thousand concerts a year.
He died in Paris in 1971, whilst he was director of the Opera. He is buried in Avon Cemetery, near the Durands.
Abou Simbel has been moved 64 metres higher
On 22 September 1968, the temples of Abu Simbel were inaugurated at their new site. Sixty-four metres higher, one hundred and eighty metres further back.
To avoid the rising waters of the Aswan High Dam, they had been cut into around a thousand blocks weighing between twenty and thirty tonnes, and then hoisted into place one by one.
This marks the culmination of the campaign launched by UNESCO on 8 March 1960. Around fifty countries contributed to it.
The day twenty thousand mayors had lunch together in the Tuileries
On 22 September 1900, during the World’s Fair, the Republic invited all the mayors of France to lunch in the Tuileries Gardens.
More than twenty thousand guests. Seven hundred tables, each ten metres long. Eighty thousand candles, thirty-nine thousand bottles. Service at five past midday, and a meal deliberately limited to an hour and a quarter.
The date was by no means a coincidence. 22 September marks the anniversary of the proclamation of the Republic in 1792.
