# French student riots and lemons

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-student-riots-and-lemons/238399>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 5, 2004, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-student-riots-and-lemons/238399 "2004-04-05T18:17:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-student-riots-and-lemons/238399/1 "2004-04-05T18:17:47Z")

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I wasn’t sure to put this in Cafe society or in here (GQ).

The Stone Roses album cover features a slice of lemon which is often referred to in relation with French student riots. What were these riots, when were they, why did they take place, and what exactly is the connection with a slice of lemon?

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**Author:** ![Celyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-student-riots-and-lemons/238399/2 "2004-04-05T19:25:49Z")

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Weel, well, one learns something new every day! Right then, on the assumption that 1968 might be a good place to start searching, that’s what I did, and here’s what I found

> [@](#):
>
> …\*\*
> 
> There was lots of talk in interviews at the time from the band about how the album wasn’t necessarily one-on-one love songs, and “Badman” reveals itself to be about the Paris student riots of May 1968. “Choke me / Smoke the air / In this citrus-sucking sunshine / I don’t care”; choking and smoking referring to the police’s use of tear gas against the students, while citrus-sucking is what the students did to counteract the effects, lemon juice being, supposedly, an antidote of sorts to tear gas.
> 
> …

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I had no idea about the lemon juice/tear gas thing - interesting! Potentially useful too, although perhaps disnign of nasty crowd control gases has changed in the last few decades.

If you feel moved to search further, I reckon “1968” would be a handy search term, and as well as “riots”, remember the French might refer to them as “les evenements de Mai 1968”

[http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=903](http://www.stylusmagazine.com/feature.php?ID=903)

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**Author:** ![Celyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9dc877/32.png) [@Celyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Celyn)\
**Post date:** [April 5, 2004, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/french-student-riots-and-lemons/238399/3 "2004-04-05T19:42:35Z")

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Sorry , I was so intrigued at there being yet _another_ use for lemon juice, apart from culinary, keeping fridges smelling fresh, and stuff like that, that I rther forgot that you had asked about the actual riots. Mea culpa.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French\_May](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_May) contains a short article and quite a lot of links.