The Guillotine in the Modern Age

The last guillotine execution in France happened in 1977, the same year Star Wars premiered in

theaters. While people were lining up to watch Luke Skywalker fight Darth Vader,

France was still using a device invented during the French Revolution. This means the guillotine

was in active use during the moon landing, Woodstock, and the invention

of the personal computer. Even more shocking, France only abolished the death penalty

in 1981, making the guillotine a surprisingly modern execution method. The device we associate

with powdered wigs and Marie Antoinette was actually cutting heads while people drove cars and watched

color television. This overlap of brutal medieval punishment and modern technology shows