On July 2

On this day in ...
... 1747 (though this site puts her birth at 1741), a daughter was born to "a family of small means" in Abbeville, Picardie, France. As Rose Bertin (left), she would become "the first celebrated French fashion designer." Following an apprenticeship she opened her own clothing shop on the Rue St. Honoré, where she catered to Versailles nobility and courtesans. Eventually Bertin would furnish millinery and garments -- most notably, extravagantly coiffed wigs -- to the Austria-born princess Marie Antoinette. Although the latter would die by guillotine, a queen deposed by the French Revolution, Bertin survived by moving her business to London for a time. She died in 1813 in Epinay sur Seine. (image credit)

(Prior July 2 posts are here, here, and here.)

On October 16

On this day in ...
... 1793 (215 years ago today), the Austrian-born, 37-year-old, former Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, was guillotined in the midst of the French Revolution. Marie (right) had been imprisoned for more than a year; her husband, the deposed Louis XVI, had been executed 10 months earlier. The former queen's execution followed by 2 days her trial for a variety of charges, among them treason and sexual abuse of her son, who had been heir to the throne.
... 1998 (10 years ago today), British authorities acting upon an international warrant issued by Spain arrested former Chilean dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who was in Britain for medical treatment. The arrest touched off years of litigation, which ended with Pinochet's return to Chile -- where he found himself the subject of criminal and civil suits, arising out of the brutality of his regime, until his death in 2006. (image credit)