Aniche

Aniche
The Church of Saint-Martin
Coat of arms
Aniche
Location within Hauts-de-France region  Aniche
Coordinates: 50°19′50″N 3°15′07″E / 50.3306°N 3.2519°E / 50.3306; 3.2519Coordinates: 50°19′50″N 3°15′07″E / 50.3306°N 3.2519°E / 50.3306; 3.2519
Country	France
Region	Hauts-de-France
Department	Nord
Arrondissement	Douai
Canton	Douai-Sud
Intercommunality	Cœur d'Ostrevent
Government
• Mayor (2014–2020)	Marc Hémez
Area1	6.52 km2 (2.52 sq mi)
Population (2009)2	10,079
• Density	1,500/km2 (4,000/sq mi)
Time zone	CET (UTC+1)
• Summer (DST)	CEST (UTC+2)
INSEE/Postal code	59008 / 59580
Elevation	26–71 m (85–233 ft) (avg. 65 m or 213 ft)
1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries. 2Population without double counting: residents of multiple communes (e.g., students and military personnel) only counted once.

¹ French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km² (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.

Aniche is a French commune in the Nord department in the Hauts-de-France region of northern France.

The commune, located in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais mining area, long lived on the mining of coal with fourteen pits on its territory. Eleven pits were owned by the Aniche Mining Company and three by the Compagnie des mines d'Azincourt (Agincourt Mining Company).

The inhabitants of the commune are known as Anichois or Anichoises.

Aniche and Auberchicourt long had the same lords.

The Gouache painting (opposite) was probably painted in 1603 and appears in the Albums de Croÿ. It is part of a wide range of topographical paintings made at the request of the Duke of Croy: an oval with a bird's-eye view of the landscape is framed in the four corners by four naked male figures with those at the top facing and the lower ones facing to the rear. The oval medallion contains a cartouche with the name of the village over a representation of the landscape seen from the south in late summer (see the plowed field and leaves on the trees).

The Entombment by Rubens is always visible in the Church of Saint-Gery of Cambrai.

On the morning of 7 February 1827 at the Saint Hyacinthe pit, fire broke out in an access passage for the workers to descend into the pit. Thick smoke spread inside the mine and asphyxiated 46 workers employed in the coal extraction tunnels. Seven young men and two fathers were found dead.

After the creation of the first glassworks in 1823, Aniche became, from the middle of the 19th century, the French capital of the window glass industry and went from 4,000 to 7,500 inhabitants in 1900. The Antoine Lumière & son plates and photographic papers Company (Lyon) were supplied by the Glassworks of the Station, better known under the name "Belotte Glass".

Jules Verne came to meet the glassworkers at Aniche in 1860 to test the feasibility of nine large sized windows for the Nautilus whose design was attributed to Captain Nemo with Professor Aronax. The Nautilus is described in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea but the origin of the windows is in one of the ghost chapters deleted from the manuscripts by request of the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel. These windows are described on page 144 of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea when Captain Nemo announces a maximum thickness of 21 cm to withstand a pressure of 100 atmospheres.