Incumbents

Monarch – Napoleon III

Events

14 January - Orsini affair: Piedmontese revolutionary Felice Orsini and his accomplices fail to assassinate Napoleon III in Paris but their Orsini bombs kill 156 bystanders. Orsini is executed on 13 March by guillotine.
11 February - Lourdes apparitions: Pauper girl Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes, 14, has a vision at the grotto of Massabielle, the first in a series of eighteen events (up to 16 August) which will come to be regarded as Marian apparitions.
August - The first aerial photography is carried out by Nadar, from a tethered balloon.^[1]
September - Cochinchina Campaign: French warships, under Charles Rigault de Genouilly, attack and occupy Da Nang, Vietnam.

Arts and literature

21 October - Following the lifting of government licensing restrictions on the number of performers, Jacques Offenbach's first 2-act opéra bouffe, Orpheus in the Underworld (Orphée aux enfers), is premiered at Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens.
Camille Saint-Saëns succeeds Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély as organist of La Madeleine, Paris.

Births

6 January - Sébastien Faure, anarchist, (died 1942)
9 January - Maurice Couette, physicist (died 1943)
21 January - Mélanie Bonis, composer (died 1937)
31 January - André Antoine, actor-manager (died 1943)
7 February - Amédée-François Lamy, military officer (died 1900)
15 April - Émile Durkheim, sociologist (died 1917)
19 May - Roland Bonaparte, prince, president of the Société de Géographie (died 1924)
28 August - Charles le Bargy, actor and film director (died 1936)
August - Guy d'Hardelot (Helen Rhodes, née Guy), composer, pianist and teacher (died 1936)

Deaths

15 January - Antoine Maurice Apollinaire d'Argout, statesman, minister and governor of the Bank of France (born 1782)
8 February - Ambroise Roux-Alphéran, historian (born 1776)
27 March - Jean Guillaume Audinet-Serville, entomologist (born 1775)
9 April - Auguste François Chomel, pathologist (born 1788)
3 May - Julien Auguste Pélage Brizeux, poet (born 1803)
21 May - Charles-Louis Havas, writer and founder of Agence France-Presse (born 1783)
10 July - Auguste de Montferrand, architect (born 1786)
5 August - Joseph-Marie, comte Portalis, diplomat and statesman (born 1778)
10 December - Joseph Paul Gaimard, naval surgeon and naturalist (born 1793)

References

^ "Brief history of aerial photography". www.findaerialphotography.com. 2007. Retrieved 2015-01-02.

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