The first Frenchman in space, the campaign for the Maastricht referendum, the contaminated blood trial, the attack on Jacques Chirac, medals at the Olympic Games... From 1972 to today, L'Express has witnessed, each summer, political events, technological advances, sporting victories or great cultural firsts. Thanks to our archives, we invite you to relive this news by turning the pages of our fifty-year-old weekly. After the summer of 1972 last week, place this week in the summer of 1982.
In 1982, Jack Lang received the results of a major survey of French cultural practices. He learns that five million people, including one out of two young people, play a musical instrument. The Minister of Culture and his advisers then imagine a great popular demonstration which would allow all the musicians to express themselves and make themselves known. Will the French be there, wonders Jack Lang? Bet succeeded beyond his hopes: forty years later, from Asia to Brazil via Africa, the Fête de la Musique is celebrated all over the world.
"It will be the day of brass bands, municipal bands and orpheons. Date: June 21. Title: Festival (make) music. The ingenuity of the pun risks arousing a few dubious smiles. Jack Lang's project , minister, in this case, of a very popular culture, is, however, charged with intentions. 'The solstices, he explains, were, in the pagan era, the occasion for exceptional ceremonies. 'I wanted the transition to summer to be a national act. I hope that that evening the whole country will be seized by the party.' And through music.
The French are therefore invited to leave their homes, with their guitar, their pipe or their bagpipes, to sing, to dance, to 'clap their hands'. There will be choirs, jazz, rock in the squares and carillon concerts. Radio channels announce reports and specials. [...]
In the provinces, music will be played when the trains arrive, as in Bordeaux, where the Aquitaine Brass Ensemble will perform at Saint-Jean station. Jack Lang himself promised that he would sit at the piano on a square with Edwige Avice and Charles Hernu. 'Every act of music requires rehabilitation, respect and support. We need to know.' We will know. Especially if the five million French people who play an instrument take to the streets."
René Bernard, L'Express of June 18, 1982.
Article on the first Fête de la Musique.
L'Express
The road accident which occurred on July 31, 1982 on the A6 motorway is to date the deadliest in the history of road disasters in France. It entails the adoption of strong measures to strengthen road traffic legislation, such as the prohibition of collective transport of children during the crossover period and the reduction of the maximum authorized speed for coaches.
"Very quickly, a macabre debate begins above the rubble. Whose fault is it? The results of this great holiday weekend were 158 dead and 691 injured. Technically, the accident in Beaune is identical to the hundreds of pileups that occur on the motorways. The same causes - traffic jams, high speed, lane changes, etc. - have the same effects, only the number of victims (the highest ever recorded in France for a tragedy in the road) and their personality - forty-six grandchildren out of fifty-three dead - lend weight to the questions that we would not even ask ourselves in 'ordinary' times. Everything happened on the highway, a safe and easy par excellence. The coaches were new and well maintained. The drivers were professionals of good reputation. Fate? No, this trip to the end of hell is heavy with responsibilities. Without prejudging the results of the commission of inquiry, we can't help asking questions estions, very close to an indictment. And first this one: why did you choose the busiest night of the year to launch coaches full of children on the busiest course in France?
Jacques Potherat, L'Express of August 6, 1982.
On June 24, 1982, Jean-Loup Chrétien, engineer and air force lieutenant-colonel, was the first French astronaut to fly into space aboard the Soviet Soyuz T-6 rocket. In the midst of the Cold War, Moscow carries out a political coup by offering a Western European the possibility of traveling for the first time in space. Last June, Jean-Louis Chrétien told La Nouvelle République behind the scenes of this premiere: "In 1977, when the first European astronauts were selected to leave for Houston, there were no French people. A dragee difficult to swallow for the President of the Republic at the time, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, knowing that France was the main contributor to the budget of the European Space Agency, it was there that Leonid Brezhnev proposed to arrange to make rob a Frenchman before those in Houston. That's how it happened."
"Officially, it was science, nothing but science. But it was difficult to completely forget that the first Frenchman in space was in a communist rocket. It was difficult to ignore the grumbling of the many French researchers who had demanded the cancellation of the flight, in the name of human rights. Some expected at least a small counterpart, a small symbolic gesture... Alas! In both East and West, the he political eclipse was total. The order of silence was scrupulously respected. [...]
In space as on the ground, the ballet was perfectly regulated: flawless launch, perfect orbiting, uneventful rendezvous... In the U.S.S.R., it is true, space is ordinary... Nearly 1400 satellites, 50 manned vessels, 50 men have already been propelled into the stellar steppes. And we manufacture spacecraft on the assembly line, like vulgar automobiles. Admittedly, the good old 1950s model rockets, which have been in demand since Gagarin, do not have the provocative elegance of the American shuttle. But they work so well... Even if there is a French citizen on a jump seat, that does not arouse more emotion among Soviet officials than the sight of the usual queues in front of supply stores. For the USSR, the interest of this joint program was quite different. 'This is a shining example of fruitful cooperation in the exploration of space for peaceful purposes,' solemnly declared the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Leonid Brezhnev, inviting Jean-Loup Chrétien to come and shake his hand."
Dominique Simonnet, L'Express of July 2, 1982.
Article from L'Express of July 2, 1982.
L'Express
The attack perpetrated on August 9, 1982 against the Goldenberg restaurant in Paris killed six people and injured 22. From the first days of investigation, the responsibility of the terrorist organization Abou Nidal is pointed out. It will take 38 years for a Palestinian suspect exiled in Norway to be extradited to France. In 2019, the Jordanian justice refused the extradition of two other alleged members of the commando.
"A further degree was crossed, on August 9, in the escalation of blind terrorism of which, since the beginning of the summer, Paris has tended to become a closed field. But, this time, neither invisible bombers nor a gutted street, as in Copernicus or Marbeuf. No. A clean killing, carried out with an uncovered face, leaving in its wake only about thirty bloody bodies, a few vague impacts in the bodies of parked cars. The puddles were quickly erased. scarlets, the little rivulets of pink blood and the already brown stains that marked the route of the commando of killers. A route programmed as if by a monstrous computer responsible for striking the Jewish community in the heart, in this district of the Marais marked by the best and the worst memories. [...]
The casings and the charger recovered after the massacre in the rue des Rosiers allow the police officers of the Criminal Brigade to make other connections. And perhaps trace the chain to a dissident Palestinian organization, that of Abu Nidal, a former rival of Yasser Arafat who worked for the Iraqis, then the Syrians. Indeed, the weapons used by the killers of August 9 are - in addition to the grenade of Czech origin - Polish submachine guns of a short caliber 9 mm, not found in France. However, weapons of this type have already been used in two attacks ordered by Abu Nidal.
Jacques Derogy, L'Express of August 13, 1982.
Cover of L'Express of August 13, 1982.
L'Express
Ten years after the invention of the medical scanner by the British Godfrey Hounsfield and the South African Allan Cormack, French medicine is becoming aware of the benefits it can bring in the diagnosis of cancer.
"In oncology, currently, the scanner requires modifying about two out of three diagnoses; it also changes, and in the same proportion, the prognoses and the treatments, says Professor Maurice Laval-Jeantet, who heads the radiology department of the Saint-Louis hospital in Paris, where one of the most advanced full-body scanners in France has been operating for almost two years for twelve to fourteen hours a working day.
In eighteen months, the device provided 5400 examinations, of which more than 3100 were intended for the diagnosis of tumours. In 60% of cases, the verdict had to be changed. In 25% of cases, the examination confirmed the suspected diagnosis, but supplemented it. In 10% of cases, the CT scanner brought nothing but a useless confirmation. In 3%, there was diagnostic error and misinterpretation of images. All in all, the results are extremely positive and no one today discusses, as was the case a few years ago, the interest of scanners in oncology, from head to toe, even if there are areas of the organism where the advantage is discussed. We are a long way from the recent era when people talked about unnecessary and costly duplication of conventional diagnostic procedures that are systematically prescribed.
It is very often these diagnostic systems, which are aggressive, tedious and costly, which have given way to competition from scanners. In 1975, in France, two expert reports denied any value other than the satisfaction of an expensive curiosity at the 3 whole body scanner. This undoubtedly explains the delay and the shortage observed in our country, the red lantern in Europe, where there is still only one device for 600,000 to 900,000 inhabitants, against 1 for 200,000 in the United States and Japan. . But, now, things are clear even in France: the scanner is an essential tool for practically all cancers, because of the harmlessness of the examination and the anatomical precision of the results.
Martine Allain-Regnault, L'Express of August 20, 1982.
