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Map of France in the world and position of its largest single land territory in continental Europe

France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean, giving it one of the largest discontiguous exclusive economic zones in the world. Metropolitan France shares borders with Belgium and Luxembourg to the north, Germany to the northeast, Switzerland to the east, Italy and Monaco to the southeast, Andorra and Spain to the south, and a maritime border with the United Kingdom to the northwest. Its metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea. Its eighteen integral regions—five of which are overseas—span a combined area of 632,702 km2 (244,288 sq mi) and have an estimated total population of over 68.6 million as of January 2025. France is a semi-presidential republic and its capital, largest city and main cultural and economic centre is Paris.

Metropolitan France was settled during the Iron Age by Celtic tribes known as Gauls before Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, leading to a distinct Gallo-Roman culture. In the Early Middle Ages, the Franks formed the kingdom of Francia, which became the heartland of the Carolingian Empire. The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned the empire, with West Francia evolving into the Kingdom of France. In the High Middle Ages, France was a powerful but decentralized feudal kingdom, but from the mid-14th to the mid-15th centuries, France was plunged into a dynastic conflict with England known as the Hundred Years' War. In the 16th century, French culture flourished during the French Renaissance and a French colonial empire emerged. Internally, France was dominated by the conflict with the House of Habsburg and the French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Huguenots. France was successful in the Thirty Years' War and further increased its influence during the reign of Louis XIV.

The French Revolution of 1789 overthrew the Ancien Régime and produced the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. France reached its political and military zenith in the early 19th century under Napoleon Bonaparte, subjugating part of continental Europe and establishing the First French Empire. The collapse of the empire initiated a period of relative decline, in which France endured the Bourbon Restoration until the founding of the French Second Republic which was succeeded by the Second French Empire upon Napoleon III's takeover. His empire collapsed during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. This led to the establishment of the Third French Republic, and subsequent decades saw a period of economic prosperity and cultural and scientific flourishing known as the Belle Époque. France was one of the major participants of World War I, from which it emerged victorious at great human and economic cost. It was among the Allies of World War II, but it surrendered and was occupied in 1940. Following its liberation in 1944, the short-lived Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the defeat in the Algerian War. The current Fifth Republic was formed in 1958 by Charles de Gaulle. Algeria and most French colonies became independent in the 1960s, with the majority retaining close economic and military ties with France.

France retains its centuries-long status as a global centre of art, science, and philosophy. It hosts the fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the world's leading tourist destination, having received 100 million foreign visitors in 2023. A developed country, France has a high nominal per capita income globally, and its advanced economy ranks among the largest in the world by both nominal GDP and PPP-adjusted GDP. It is a great power, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and an official nuclear-weapon state. The country is part of multiple international organizations and forums. (Full article...)

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Catherine de' Medici, by François Clouet

The French queen Catherine de' Medici was patron for building projects including the Valois chapel at the Basilica of Saint-Denis, the Tuileries Palace, and the Hôtel de la Reine in Paris, and extensions to the Château de Chenonceau, near Blois. Born in 1519 in Florence, Catherine de' Medici was a daughter of both the Italian and the French Renaissance. She grew up in Florence and Rome under the wing of the Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII. In 1533, at the age of fourteen, she left Italy and married Henry, the second son of King Francis I of France. On doing so, she entered the greatest Renaissance court in northern Europe.

King Francis set his daughter-in-law an example of kingship and artistic patronage that she never forgot. She witnessed his huge architectural schemes at Chambord and Fontainebleau. She saw Italian and French craftsmen at work together, forging the style that became known as the first School of Fontainebleau. Francis died in 1547, and Catherine became queen consort of France. But it wasn't until her husband King Henry's death in 1559, when she found herself at forty the effective ruler of France, that Catherine came into her own as a patron of architecture. Over the next three decades, she launched a series of costly building projects aimed at enhancing the grandeur of the monarchy. During the same period, however, religious civil war gripped the country and brought the prestige of the monarchy to a dangerously low ebb. (Full article...)

Émile Michel Hyacinthe Lemoine (1840–1912) was a French civil engineer and a mathematician, a geometer in particular. He was educated at a variety of institutions, including the Prytanée National Militaire and, most notably, the École Polytechnique. Lemoine taught as a private tutor for a short period after his graduation from the latter school.

Lemoine is best known for his proof of the existence of the Lemoine point (or the symmedian point) of a triangle. Other mathematical work includes a system he called Géométrographie and a method which related algebraic expressions to geometric objects. He has been called a co-founder of modern triangle geometry, as many of its characteristics are present in his work.

For most of his life, Lemoine was a professor of mathematics at the École Polytechnique. In later years, he worked as a civil engineer in Paris, and he also took an amateur's interest in music. During his tenure at the École Polytechnique and as a civil engineer, Lemoine published several papers on mathematics, most of which are included in a fourteen-page section in Nathan Altshiller Court's College Geometry. Additionally, he founded a mathematical journal titled, L'intermédiaire des mathématiciens.

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A Madeleine is a small, shell-shaped sponge cake originating from France, traditionally made with flour, sugar, eggs, and butter, often flavoured with lemon zest or almonds. Known for its light, airy texture and distinctive hump, the Madeleine is famously associated with Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, where it evokes powerful memories of childhood.

The madeleine (French pronunciation: [mad.lɛn], English: /ˈmædln/ or /ˌmædlˈn/) or petite madeleine ([pə.tit mad.lɛn]) is a traditional small cake from Commercy and Liverdun, two communes of the Lorraine region in northeastern France. (Full article...)

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Daft Punk were a French electronic music duo formed in 1993 in Paris by Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo. They achieved popularity in the late 1990s as part of the French house movement, combining house music, funk, disco, techno, rock and synth-pop. They are regarded as one of the most influential acts in dance music.

Daft Punk formed after Bangalter and de Homem-Christo's indie rock band, Darlin', disbanded. Their debut album, Homework, was released by Virgin Records in 1997 to positive reviews, backed by the singles "Around the World" and "Da Funk". (Full article...)

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25 March 2025 – Aviation accidents and incidents
Three people are injured when two Alpha Jet planes from the French Air and Space Force aerobatics team Patrouille de France crash after a mid-air collision during rehearsals. (France 24)
11 March 2025 – Peace negotiations in the Russian invasion of Ukraine
The military chiefs of all European NATO countries meet in Paris, France, to discuss a potential European peacekeeping force in Ukraine, alongside Ukrainian representatives. The U.S. was not involved in the meeting. (RFE/RL)
9 March 2025 – Russian invasion of Ukraine
Military aid to Ukraine, France–Ukraine relations, France–Russia relations
French Armed Forces Minister Sebastien Lecornu says that France will use €195 million in interest from Russian assets to fund a military aid package to Ukraine. (Reuters)

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Grenoble trolleybus 637.

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