What was happening in France 10, 50 and 100 years ago
Events include the murder of a French hiker by terrorists, the birth of Maurice Jarre and mutiny on the SS France
French film composer Maurice Jarre was born in September 1924
dpa picture alliance archive / Alamy
September 2014
French hiker beheaded in Algeria
Hervé Gourdel, a 55-year-old mountain guide from Nice, was abducted and killed by a jihadist group linked to Islamic State (IS) militants while on holiday in Algeria.
Jund al-Khilafa had given France a deadline to halt air strikes on IS in Iraq, after which they had threatened to behead the hostage. Then-French President Francois Hollande condemned the killing as a "cruel and cowardly" act.
News of Mr Gourdel’s murder hit France hard, not least because he was a tourist in a region popular with French holidaymakers – Djurdjura National Park in northern Algeria.
He was also the first French victim of IS’s high-profile campaign to use Western hostages as political pawns.
The group had already beheaded three since August: US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and the British aid worker David Haines. Like Gourdel, their deaths were all filmed and posted online.
September 1974
Crew mutiny on SS France
The SS France, one of the last great trans-Atlantic ocean liners, was taken over by crew on September 12, 1974 in a desperate bid to stop it being withdrawn from service.
Despite an illustrious career – Salvador Dali and the Mona Lisa were among high-profile names it had carried – rising oil prices and the expansion of the cruise market increasingly punched a hole in profits.
When the French government refused to provide further subsidies, furious crew members commandeered the ship in the entrance to Le Havre port, blocking all traffic.
The 1,200 passengers aboard had to be ferried to shore on tenders the next day, but the strikers themselves held out for over a month before admitting defeat.
France was bought by Norwegian Cruise Line in 1979, extensively modified and renamed SS Norway.
A boiler explosion in 2003 seriously damaged the ship and killed eight crew members. It was eventually scrapped in 2008.
Read more: French team build faithful replica of William the Conqueror’s warship
September 1924
Movie composer Jarre born
Maurice Jarre, the composer behind scores for Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Ghost, among countless others, was born on September 13, 1924 in Lyon.
He was best known for his collaboration with director David Lean, working on all of his films between 1962 and 1984.
For three of these – Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and A Passage to India – he won Academy Awards. Doctor Zhivago also earned him chart success when Somewhere My Love (to his tune Lara's Theme) was performed by the Mike Sammes Singers and reached Number 14 in 1966.
Jarre initially enrolled in engineering school but switched to the Conservatoire de Paris to study composition and harmony against his father’s will. He recorded his first film score in France in 1951.
Jarre was married four times including, in the 1940s, to a French Resistance member and concentration camp survivor, with whom he had a son, Jean-Michel Jarre, a pioneer in electronic music. Maurice died of cancer in 2009 in Los Angeles, aged 84.
