Finish of the first Tour de France: July 19th, 1903. (Months Past).(byproducts of French bicycling craze )

PRODUCTS OF THE bicycling craze of the 1890s in France included an army regiment mounted on bicycles and numerous flourishing bicycle-connected businesses as well as a public appetite for races. Besides track events in 'velodromes', there were long-distance road races, from Paris to Vienna and St Petersburg, for instance, and from Paris to Rome.

The Tour de France, which began as a newspaper circulation-booster, was an unexpected by-product of the Dreyfus Affair. In 1899 the bicycle newspaper Le Velo, which sold 80,000 copies a day, ran a pro-Dreyfus piece that caused a fierce ...

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