Research Seminar December 25th: Manfred Posani Löwenstein - The Louvre on Fire: History of a False Report

On the last week of May 1871 Paris was burning. The terrible days of the “Semaine sanglante” have been thoroughly studied by scholars; but it is surprising that not a single study has been devoted, until now, to a supposed event that had a huge echo at the time: between the 24th and the 30th of May 1871 the newspapers of the major cities in the world – with aid of the transatlantic telegraph, first installed in 1867 – trumpeted the destruction of the Louvre. In this talk I will present an overview of a study that I have only just begun, the object of which is, in all probability, the first case of a false report distributed by mass media on a global scale.