Incumbents

Monarch – Napoleon III

Events

26 March - Attempting to explain Mercury's solar orbit, mathematician Urbain Le Verrier has proposed the existence of a hypothetical planet, Vulcan, inside its orbit and amateur astronomer Edmond Modeste Lescarbault claims to have observed it on this date.^[1]
23 April - Austria issues an ultimatum seeking the complete de-militarization of the Kingdom of Sardinia.
29 April - Second Italian War of Independence begins, when Austrian ultimatum is ignored.
14 May - Napoleon III arrives in Alessandria, taking command of the operations.
20 May - Battle of Montebello, Piedmontese cavalry and French infantry defeat Austrian troops.
30 May - Battle of Palestro, French-Sardinian victory.
4 June - Battle of Magenta, French-Sardinian victory under Napoleon III against the Austrians.
24 June - Battle of Solferino, French-Sardinian victory.
30 June - Charles Blondin crosses Niagara Falls on a tightrope for the first time.
12 July - Armistice of Villafranca ends the Second Italian War of Independence.
24 November - The French Navy's La Gloire ("Glory"), the first ocean-going ironclad warship in history, is launched.

Arts and literature

19 March - Charles Gounod's opera Faust is first performed, at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris.
30 April - English writer Charles Dickens' historical novel A Tale of Two Cities begins publication in London.
19 December - César Franck inaugurates the new organ at the basilia of Sainte-Clotilde, Paris, an instrument built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.
Georges Bizet composes the opera buffa Don Procopio and symphonic poem Vasco de Gama while in Rome.
Sculptor Aimé Millet receives the Légion d'honneur.

Births

15 May - Pierre Curie, physicist, shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics (died 1906)
3 July – Abel Julien Pagnard, French engineer and architect (died 1913)
7 August – Gustave Belot, professor and philosopher (died 1929)
3 September - Jean Jaurès, socialist and pacifist (assassinated) (died 1914)
9 October - Alfred Dreyfus, military officer (see: Dreyfus Affair) (died 1935)
18 October - Henri Bergson, philosopher (died 1941)
2 December - Georges-Pierre Seurat, painter (died 1891)
17 December - Paul César Helleu, artist (died 1927)

Deaths

18 March - Jean Louis Lassaigne, chemist (born 1800)
16 April - Alexis de Tocqueville, political thinker and historian (born 1805)
5 July - Charles Cagniard de la Tour, engineer and physicist (born 1777)
23 July - Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, poet (born 1786)
7 November - Auguste Hilarion, comte de Kératry, poet, novelist, historian and politician (born 1769)
19 November - Charles-Gaspard Delestre-Poirson, playwright and theatre director (born 1790)
Full date unknown - Pierre Boitard, botanist and geologist (born 1789)

References

^ Baum, Richard; Sheehan, William (1997). In Search of Planet Vulcan, the Ghost in Newton's Clockwork Machine. New York: Plenum Press. ISBN 978-0-306-45567-4.

v t e Years in France
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v t e 1859 in Europe
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