When the Bastille was stormed on 14 July 1789 it held just seven prisoners: four forgers, two lunatics and one aristocrat.
The crowd was really after its stores of gunpowder.
The event
More amazing facts
- 1787 · 1788 British Australia exists partly because of American independence.
- 1789 The navy's most famous mutiny broke out on a ship carrying plants.
- 1789 Captain Bligh, set adrift by mutineers, sailed 6,700 km in an open boat.
- 1789 · 1792 Dr Guillotin did not invent the guillotine and opposed the death penalty.
- 1789 George Washington's false teeth were not wooden.
- 1790 · 1808 The Bounty mutineers' hideout was found only 18 years later.