[4] Three town councilors died on 1 June 2009 when Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic killing all 228 occupants onboard.

The garden at Ermenonville was planned beginning in 1762 by Marquis René Louis de Girardin, the friend and final patron of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Completed by 1778 with care and craft, the garden came to resemble a natural environment, almost a wilderness, appearing untouched by any human intervention.

Girardin admired the work of William Shenstone at The Leasowes and made a ferme ornée (decorative farm) at Ermenonville.

Enhancing the elegiac mood of these views were the altars and monuments, the 'Rustic Temple', and other details meant to evoke Rousseau's Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse.