Last execution by guillotine
The guillotine is still in use in the year of Star Wars
On 10 September 1977 Hamida Djandoubi was guillotined in Marseille's Baumettes prison, the last execution in France and in Western Europe. France abolished the death penalty in 1981.
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Did you know
Star Wars came out in May 1977, and in September France carried out its last execution by guillotine. The death penalty was abolished there only in 1981.
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 3 years later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1957 Sputnik 1, the first satellite — 20 years earlier
- 1961 Gagarin's flight — 16 years earlier
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 8 years later
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 12 years later
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — 14 years later
Middle East
- 1979 Iranian Revolution — 2 years later
- 1980–1988 Iran–Iraq War — 3 years later
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 13 years later
Africa
- 1963 The Organisation of African Unity is founded — 14 years earlier
- 1967 First human heart transplant — 10 years earlier
- 1967–1970 Nigerian Civil War and Biafra — 10 years earlier
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 3 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 6 years later
Asia
- 1953 First ascent of Everest — 24 years earlier
- 1971–1971 Bangladesh Liberation War — 6 years earlier
- 1975–1979 The Khmer Rouge and the Cambodian genocide — 2 years earlier
- 1976 Tangshan earthquake — 1 year earlier
- 1978 Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up — 1 year later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 8 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 7 years earlier
- 1980 Eruption of Mount St. Helens — 3 years later
- 1983 Birth of the Internet: ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 6 years later
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 24 years later
Oceania
- 1954 The Castle Bravo test at Bikini — 23 years earlier
- 1959 The Antarctic Treaty — 18 years earlier
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 15 years later
Alive at the time
- Charlie Chaplin (aged 88)
- Nelson Mandela (aged 59)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 47)
- Golda Meir (aged 79)
- Jorge Luis Borges (aged 78)
- Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) (aged 76)
- Leonid Brezhnev (aged 71)
- Mother Teresa (aged 67)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 66)
- Richard Nixon (aged 64)