Although we enjoyed our rounds of the government offices in Vientiane, with officials offering tea and pleasing conversation in French, we were getting nowhere.

This is important because, despite all the efforts of the French government, an appreciable segment of France's export trade in wines is still tainted with a misrepresentation approaching downright dishonesty, and there are many too many negociants who would rather turn a sou than amass a creditable reputation overseas.

But by week's end the Laotian cry of invasion was read as an exaggeration ( see foreign news ), and the U.S. was agreeing with its cautious British and French allies that a neutralist -- rather than a pro-Western -- government might be best for Laos.

The " Days of April " ( journées d ' avril ) is a name appropriated in French history to a series of insurrections at Lyons, Paris and elsewhere, against the government of Louis Philippe in 1834, which led to violent repressive measures, and to a famous trial known as the procès d ' avril.

An attempt to require an Annales-written textbook for French schools was rejected by the government.

The French Revolution ( 1787 – 99 ) that began during his youth was also influential: Ampère ’ s father was called into public service by the new revolutionary government, becoming a justice of the peace in a small town near Lyon.

* 1839 – The French government announces that Louis Daguerre's photographic process is a gift " free to the world ".

The French withdrew in 1867, and the government they supported quickly collapsed.

* 2006 – A massacre is carried out by Sri Lankan government forces, killing 17 employees of the French INGO Action Against Hunger ( known internationally as Action Contre la Faim, or ACF ).

In 2000, a French court ruled that a government minister's description of anthroposophy as a cult was defamatory.

Some even seemed to want an event similar to the French Revolution to come to the United States to overthrow the government.

In 1880, the French government awarded Bell the Volta Prize of 50, 000 francs ( approximately US $ 10, 000 at that time, about $ in current dollars ) for the invention of the telephone, which he used to found the Volta Laboratory, along with Sumner Tainter and Bell's cousin Chichester Bell.

In 1796, during the French Revolution and three years after the declaration of war between France and Great Britain, Étienne-Gaspard Robert met with the French government and proposed the use of mirrors to burn the invading ships of the British Royal Navy.

The parade passes down the Champs-Élysées from the Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde, where the President of the French Republic, his government and foreign ambassadors to France stand.

In France he was considered as the restorer of the art, which had declined after the time of Louis XIV, and during the last twenty years of his life the French government commissiond him to undertake several works.

The French government relocated from Paris to Bordeaux very briefly during World War II, when it became apparent that Paris would soon fall into German hands ( as in 1870 during war against Prussia and at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian war ).

" However French government applies a principle of precaution against GMO.

The French Monarchy did not concern itself with the minority languages of France spoken by the lower classes, although it did require the use of French for government business.

An attempt by the French government to incorporate the independent Breton-language immersion schools ( called Diwan ) into the state education system was blocked by the French Constitutional Council on the grounds that, as the 1992 amendment to the Constitution of the 5th Republic states that French is the language of the Republic, no other language may be used as a language of instruction in state schools.

The Toubon Law states that French is the language of public education, which means that Breton-language schools do not receive funding from the national government, though the Brittany Region may fund them.

Ms. Turocy has been decorated as Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government.

Alexis Carrel ( June 28, 1873 – November 5, 1944 ) was a French surgeon and biologist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912 for pioneering vascular suturing techniques.

was conferred upon Brewster by Marischal College, Aberdeen ; in 1815 he was made a member of the Royal Society of London, and received the Copley medal ; in 1818 he received the Rumford Medal of the society ; and in 1816 the French Institute awarded him one-half of the prize of three thousand francs for the two most important discoveries in physical science made in Europe during the two preceding years.

In 1881, with pressure from his friend Antonin Proust, the French government awarded Manet the Légion d ' honneur.

Baudot received little help from the French Telegraph Administration for his system, and often had to fund his own research, even having to sell the gold medal awarded by the 1878 Exposition Universelle during 1880.

In October 1894, the French government awarded him the Grand-Croix de la Legion d ' Honneur.

In March 2006, the French Minister of Culture awarded Lewis the Légion d ' honneur, calling him the " French people's favorite clown ".

He was awarded the French Croix de guerre avec palme for his acts of heroism.

He was influenced by the French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson ( 1859 – 1941 ), who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1927.

There was a widespread recognition that something must be done, and " in 1858 Morse was awarded the sum of 400, 000 French francs ( equivalent to about $ 80, 000 at the time ) by the governments of France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Piedmont, Russia, Sweden, Tuscany and Turkey, each of which contributed a share according to the number of Morse instruments in use in each country.

The Croix de Guerre was awarded by the French government in 1947 and the Médaille de la Résistance in 1973.

He has received considerable critical praise in France, including for several films which were not well received in the United States, and he has been awarded two of France's highest honors: in 1994 he became a recipient of the French Republic's Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and in 2007 he was awarded the Légion d ' honneur medal.

After a tendering process the businesses were awarded as 12-year franchises, with Swanston Trams won by National Express Group PLC, a European mass passenger transport company, and the Yarra Trams business by MetroLink Victoria Pty Ltd, joint venture between French company Transdev and Australian company Transfield Services.

He was posthumously awarded the Ordre de la Libération by the French government in 1960, one of only two people ( the other being Churchill ) to be awarded the medal after 1946.

This was followed by a memoir on the theory of the tides, to which, conjointly with the memoirs by Euler and Colin Maclaurin, a prize was awarded by the French Academy: these three memoirs contain all that was done on this subject between the publication of Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica and the investigations of Pierre-Simon Laplace.

* J. M. G. Le Clézio – French author and professor, was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature

In 1920, the French government awarded Ravel the Légion d ' honneur, but he refused it.

Mistral achieved literary success with his novel Miréio ( Mireille in French ); he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1904.

In 1989, the French government awarded the Comanche code-talkers the Chevalier of the National Order of Merit.

De Broglie was awarded a post as counselor to the French High Commission of Atomic Energy in 1945 for his efforts to bring industry and science closer together.

In 1904 he was the first British subject to receive the Lavoisier medal of the French Academy of Sciences, and in 1906 he was the first to be awarded the Matteucci medal of the Italian Society of Sciences.