Napoleon receives census letter from French Agency
by FFE EU News Staff
It seems despite being dead for 192 years Napoleon Bonaparte can’t escape the French statistic agency INSEE’s lens.
INSEE sent a census form addressed to Napoleon on 2 December to 3 Rue Saint Charles, Ajaccio City. Two doors down from this address is the Napoleon museum, built on the site of the revolutionary giant.
How a French citizen who died almost 200 ago ended up in INSEE’s books is uncertain. But it seemed the name was unnoticed until the letter was received by the current residents in the address. Before returning to sender, the current resident tried helping INSEE look for their intended recipient by writing: ‘Died in 1821 – please forward to Saint Peter.’
INSEE explained that the mix-up might have been the result of a prank played by an unknown person who registered an online business under the name of Napoleon and the address. The letter sent was also just one of those automatically addressed to newly-registered auto-entrepreneurs (sole proprietors) who needed to answer a few of INSEEs questions.