1908 in France

Events from the year 1908 in France.

Incumbents

• President: Armand Fallières
• President of the Council of Ministers: Georges Clemenceau

Events

• 12 January – A long-distance radio message is sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time.
• 21 March – Henri Farman pilots the first passenger flight.

Sport

• 13 July – Tour de France begins.
• 9 August – Tour de France ends, won by Lucien Petit-Breton.

Births

January to March

• 9 January – Simone de Beauvoir, author and philosopher (died 1986)
• 12 January – Jean Delannoy, actor, screenwriter and film director (died 2008)
• 26 January – Stéphane Grappelli, jazz violinist (died 1997)
• 31 January – Simonne Mathieu, tennis player (died 1980)
• 12 February – Jean Effel, painter, illustrator and journalist (died 1982)
• 26 February – Jean-Pierre Wimille, motor racing driver and resistance member (died 1949)
• 27 February – Pierre Brunet, rowing coxswain and Olympic medallist (died 1979)
• 29 February – Balthus, artist (died 2001)
• 5 March – Christian Boussus, tennis player (died 2003)
• 8 March – Raymond Dronne, politician (died 1991)
• 14 March – Maurice Merleau-Ponty, phenomenological philosopher (died 1961)
• 20 March – Roger Trinquier, army officer (died 1986)
• 25 March – Henri Rochereau, politician and European Commissioner (died 1999)

April to June

• 12 April – André Martinet, linguist (died 1999)
• 21 April – Louis Hostin, weightlifter and Olympic champion (died 1998)
• 5 May – Jacques Massu, General (died 2002)
• 29 May – Pierre-Henri Teitgen, lawyer, professor and politician (died 1997)
• 30 May – André Cheuva, soccer player (died 1989)
• 2 June – Marcel Langiller, international soccer player (died 1980
• 12 June – Henri Rol-Tanguy, communist and leader in the French Resistance (died 2002)

July to September

• 2 July – Léon Arthur Elchinger, Bishop of Strasbourg (died 1998)
• 5 July – Henri, comte de Paris, Orléanist claimant to the French throne (died 1999)
• 12 July – Alain Cuny, actor (died 1994)
• 25 July – Robert-Ambroise-Marie Carré, priest and author (died 2004)
• 5 August – Shlomo Pines, French-born Israeli scholar of Jewish and Islamic philosophy (died 1990)
• 18 August – Edgar Faure, politician, essayist, historian, and memoirist (died 1988)
• 22 August – Henri Cartier-Bresson, photographer (died 2004)
• 28 August – Robert Merle, novelist (died 2004)
• 2 September – Fania Fénelon, pianist, composer and cabaret singer (died 1983)
• 8 September – Luc Étienne (Périn), writer (died 1984).
• 19 September – Paul Bénichou, writer, critic and literary historian (died 2001)
• 19 September – Robert Lecourt, jurist, fourth President of the European Court of Justice (died 2004)
• 25 September – Jacqueline Audry, film director (died 1977)
• 25 September – Roger Beaufrand, Olympic gold medal-winning cyclist (died 2007)

October to December

• 30 October – Marcel Béalu, writer (died 1993)
• 1 November – Sylvia Bataille, actress (died 1993)
• 4 November – Pauline Trigère, fashion designer (died 2002)
• 6 November – Françoise Dolto, physician and psychoanalyst (died 1988)
• 16 November – Emmanuelle Cinquin, religious sister (died 2008)
• 19 November – Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur, organist and composer (died 2002)
• 24 November – Simone de la Chaume, golfer (died 2001).
• 10 December – Olivier Messiaen, composer, organist and ornithologist (died 1992)
• 17 December – Raymond Louviot, cyclist (died 1969)
• 31 December – Pauline de Rothschild, fashion icon and tastemaker (died 1976)

Full date unknown

• Gilbert Degrémont, water treatment expert (died 1974)
• Célestin Lainé, Breton nationalist and collaborator (died 1983)

Deaths

• 29 January – François-Marie-Benjamin Richard, Archbishop of Paris (born 1819)
• 13 April Victor André Cornil, pathologist (born 1837)
• 7 May – Ludovic Halévy, author and playwright (born 1834)
• 14 August – Jules Liégeois, jurist, member of the Nancy School of Hypnosis (born 1833)
• 25 August – Henri Becquerel, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1852)
• 14 November – Denis Jean Achille Luchaire, historian (born 1846)
• 20 November – Marie-Louis-Antoine-Gaston Boissier, classical scholar (born 1823)
• 27 November – Jean Albert Gaudry, geologist and palaeontologist (born 1827)
• 5 December – Ernest Hébert, painter (born 1817)
• Full date unknown – Jacques-Eugène Feyen, painter (born 1815)