I dedicate this post to my father, Daniel Revenu, who passed away on January 2, 2024.
While not competing “100 years ago” in the 1924 Paris Olympic Games below, he was a 4-time Olympian in fencing (foil), bringing a medal home from each of the following four Olympic Games: 1964 (Tokyo), 1968 (Mexico), 1972 (Munich) and 1976 (Montréal), a total of 6 olympic medals.
In January 1924, the Great War had only been over for 5 years and 1 month since the signature of the armistice on November 11, 1918. People were still recovering from the horror of the war and were eager to live in peace. My paternal grandparents were 14 and 16, and my maternal grandparents 5 and 2 years old.
Let’s take a look at a few events 100 years ago in France.
January 6, 1924: flood of the Seine river
The Seine river floods in multiple cities. In Paris, it peaks at 7.32 meters (24 feet). The “Zouave du Pont de l’Alma” (stone statue made by Georges Diebolt in 1856), and which has been the indicator for years of measuring the floods of the Seine, is swimming! There were actually 4 statues under the “Pont de l’Alma” bridge in the 1850s, but between 1970 and 1974, the bridge was rebuilt to make it larger, and the Zouave was the only one to be reinstated. The other 3 statues were relocated to “Bois de Vincennes” in Paris (75), Dijon (21) and La Fère (02). So in France, we say that: “Quand le Zouave a les pieds dans l’eau, la Seine est en crue” (When the Zouave’s feet are in the water, the Seine is flooding”).
1924: France hosts both the Winter and Summer Olympic Games
First Winter Olympic Games – Chamonix (74)
January 25-February 5, 1924. The first Winter Olympic Games are held in Chamonix (74) (or Chamonix-Mont-Blanc), a commune in the French Alps located 15 minutes from the Mont Blanc. 16 countries; 260 athletes (13 women and 247 men); 6 disciplines in the program.
You’ll find pictures, videos and more information of the 1924 Winter Olympic Games on the Chamonix-Mont-Blanc website (in English) here.
January 25, 1924: Opening Ceremony of the First Winter Olympic Games – Photo: Gouvernement – Archives
Summer Olympic Games – Paris (75)
July 5-27, 1924 (some events started on May 4). 44 countries; 3,089 athletes (135 women and 3,089 men); 126 events in 17 sports and 23 disciplines.
Opening Ceremony at the Olympic stadium. Colombes (near Paris). Photo: BnF Gallica
Tour de France
June 22-July 20, 1924: 18th Tour de France. 15 stages, 5,425km, from and to Paris. Winner: Ottavio Bottechia, first Italian cyclist to win the Tour de France and first rider to hold the yellow jersey the entire event.
Cyclists left to right: Omer Huysse, Ottavio Bottechia and Nicolas Frantz. BnF Gallica
Transportation
Planes
May 27, 1924: French pilot Adrienne Bolland sets the woman’s world record for loops done in an hour: 212 loops in 72 minutes, at Orly, on a Caudron C.27 F-AGAP plane. She had also been the first woman to fly over the Andes between Chile and Argentina in February 1921.
Photo: Air France
Trains
Arrival of a train in Deauville (Calvados (14), Normandy), August 15, 1924
Photo: BnF Gallica
Automobiles
Meet the “Taxi Citroën”. Place du Palais Royal, Paris, 1924. You have to feel bad for the driver on rainy days…
Photo: BnF Gallica
Helicopters
April 18, 1924: Issy-les-Moulineaux (near Paris): Raúl Pateras Pescara, born in Argentina and living in Paris, sets the world record for flying in the helicopter he designed, his model 2F. Distance: 736 meters (2,415 ft).
Duration of flight: 4 minutes, 11 seconds. Height: 1.8 meters (5 ft 11 in).
Photo: Historicwings.com
Miscellaneous
Eiffel Tower repainted: 35th birthday gift
The Eiffel Tower, nicknamed “La Dame de Fer” in French (“The Iron Lady”) is repainted every 7 years, per the recommendation of Gustave Eiffel himself. Over the years, her color has changed a few times, from reddish-brown to yellow-brown to grey. It takes about 50 vertigo-free painters (I’ll never be on that list!), 60 tons of paint, 55 km (34 miles) of safety line, for a total of 250,000 m2 (2,690.977 Square Feet or 61.77 acres) repainted.
Info: TourEiffel.Paris
Flea Market
1920s – The first permanent cabins were built after the First World War, by one Monsieur Vernaison, a ‘chaisier’ who rented chairs by the hour in public gardens in Paris as his main occupation. Crocheteurs were no longer obligated to move their goods to storage every night. The market he created is now called marché Vernaison.
Info & photo: Paris Flea Market
Gaston Doumergue: 13th President of France
After the resignation of Alexandre Millerand, Gaston Doumergue is elected President of the Republic. He is the 13th president of the French Republic, elected for 7 years (13 June 1924 – 13 June 1931). The length of the presidential term was reduced from 7 years to five years following the 2000 referendum.
World Events
First Flight around the World
On April 6, 1924, eight U.S. Army Air Service pilots and mechanics in four airplanes left Seattle, Washington, to carry out the first circumnavigation of the globe by air. They completed the journey 175 days later on September 28, after making 74 stops and covering about 27,550 miles.
Post info: National Air and Space Museum.
Photo: Wikipedia
1924 Nobel Prizes
Physics: Manne Siegbahn. Swedish physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1924 “for his discoveries and research in the field of X-ray spectroscopy”.
Medicine: Willem Einthoven. Dutch medical doctor and physiologist. He invented the first practical electrocardiograph (ECG or EKG) in 1895 and received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1924 for it (“for the discovery of the mechanism of the electrocardiogram”).
Literature: Władysław Reymont. Polish novelist. His best-known work is the award-winning four-volume novel Chłopi (The Peasants).
No Chemistry nor Peace Nobel prizes were awarded in 1924.
Genealogy
If you are logged in to your Geneanet account, the links I include in my posts should take you to the actual pages of all individuals, castles, battles, etc., and display my sources. If you don’t have a Geneanet account, I think the links will take you to my Geneanet “Contact Page”.
(FYI: on Geneanet, the little “green circle” on an individual’s picture indicates my direct lineage with the individuals).
Here is my father, Daniel Revenu on my Geneanet tree and his page on Geneastar.
Olympic Games: a little bit of the story about the Olympic Games, as well as links to some Olympic athletes I “met” during my research.
Gaston Doumergue (no information on him on my tree. I only have him in the order of all kings and presidents of France, in the section titled “Origines de la famille Rois et Présidents”)
My French Lineage 