1859 in France

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.
• 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, 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
• 3 September - Jean Jaurès, socialist and pacifist
• 9 October - Alfred Dreyfus, military officer
• 18 October - Henri Bergson, philosopher
• 2 December - Georges-Pierre Seurat, painter
• 17 December - Paul César Helleu, artist

  Deaths

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