Hamida Djandoubi smoked a few cigarettes in the last moments before he was executed by guillotine in a Marseilles prison, the ultimate punishment for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet.

Since France abolished capital punishment, in 1981, it has been nearly impossible to see a guillotine. In Paris, the Museum of the Prefecture of Police possesses just a guillotine blade, while the ...

Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... NANTES, France – A 19th century guillotine in perfect working order goes up for auction in France on Thursday and is expected to fetch up to $82,000, the ...

More than four decades after the guillotine was last used in an execution in France, a 150-year-old replica of the device made famous in The Terror that followed the ...

A common rumor holds that Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the Frenchman who invented the guillotine, was also eventually executed with the device. But as the Dictionary of Eponyms notes, "Dr. Joseph ...