history
France kept using one grim execution device long after most of the world had abandoned it, right into the era of Star Wars and disco music.
France's guillotine, introduced during the Revolution as a supposedly quicker and more humane execution method, remained the country's official method of capital punishment for nearly two centuries. Its final use in September 1977 came the very same year Star Wars premiered in theaters, a striking illustration of how long an 18th-century device persisted into the modern era before France finally abolished the death penalty entirely in 1981.
1901 is far too early and 1945 still predates the device's actual final use by decades — France kept the guillotine in active legal use well past the mid-20th century, long after most Western nations had already moved to other methods or abolished capital punishment outright.
France's abolition of the death penalty in 1981 came under President François Mitterrand and made it one of the later Western European countries to end capital punishment entirely.
history
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