1868 in France

Decades:	1840s; 1850s; 1860s; 1870s; 1880s;
See also:	Other events of 1868; History of France • Timeline • Years

Events from the year 1868 in France.

Incumbents

March - Geologist Louis Lartet discovers the first identified skeletons of Cro-Magnon, the first anatomically modern humans (early Homo sapiens sapiens), at Abri de Crô-Magnon, a rock shelter at Les Eyzies in the Dordogne.
18 August - The element later named as helium is first detected in the spectrum of the Sun's chromosphere by astronomer Jules Janssen during a total eclipse in Guntur, India, but assumed to be sodium^[1] (on 20 October English astronomer Norman Lockyer identifies it).
October - The French military mission to Japan (1867–68) is ordered to leave by Imperial decree.
Jules-Emile Planchon and colleagues propose Phylloxera as the cause of the Great French Wine Blight.^[2]
Jean-Martin Charcot describes and names multiple sclerosis.^[3]^[4]
Louis Arthur Ducos du Hauron patents methods of color photography.^[5]
Ernest and Auguste Bollée first patent the Éolienne Bollée wind turbine.^[6]

January - Émile Zola defends his first major novel, Thérèse Raquin (1867), against charges of pornography and corruption of morals.^[7]
Establishment of the Académie Julian, a major art school in Paris that admits women, by Rodolphe Julian.
Aristide Cavaillé-Coll's organ at Notre-Dame de Paris is dedicated.

The first documented bicycle race is generally held to be a 1,200 m race at the Parc de Saint-Cloud in Paris.^[8]

17 January - Louis Couturat, logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist (died 1914)
27 January - Jenny Sacerdote, under birth name Jeanne Adèle Bernard, famous Parisian dressmaker (died 1962)
3 March - Émile Chartier, philosopher, journalist and pacifist (died 1951)
1 April - Edmond Rostand, poet and playwright (died 1918)
28 April - Émile Bernard, painter (died 1941)
6 May - Gaston Leroux, journalist, detective and novelist (died 1927)
18 June - Georges Lacombe, sculptor and painter (died 1916)

27 July - Eugène Apert, pediatrician (died 1940)
28 July - André Spire, poet, writer, and Zionist activist (died 1966)
6 August - Paul Claudel, poet, dramatist and diplomat (died 1955)
11 August - Théodore Eugène César Ruyssen, historian of philosophy and pacifist (died 1967)
24 October - Alexandra David-Néel, explorer (died 1969)
19 November - Gustave-Auguste Ferrié, radio pioneer and army general (died 1932)
25 December - Eugenie Besserer, actress (died 1934)

13 January - Arthur-Marie Le Hir, Biblical scholar and Orientalist (born 1811)
22 January - Étienne Serres, physician and embryologist (born 1786)
8 February - Jacques Camou, general (born 1792)
11 February - Léon Foucault, physicist (born 1819)
22 April - Jean-François Jarjavay, anatomist and surgeon (born 1815)
24 April - Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, Roman Catholic nun (born 1796)
6 May - Louis Marie de la Haye, Vicomte de Cormenin, jurist and political pamphleteer (born 1788)
14 June - Claude Servais Mathias Pouillet, physicist (born 1791)
22 August - Jean-François Barrière, historian (born 1786)
28 August - Antoine Clot, physician (born 1793)
24 December - Adolphe d'Archiac, geologist and paleontologist (born 1802)
December - Pierre Carmouche, playwright (born 1797)

^ Kochhar, R. K. (1991). "French astronomers in India during the 17th –19th centuries". Journal of the British Astronomical Association. 101 (2): 95–100. Bibcode:1991JBAA..101...95K.
^ "The Great French Wine Blight". Wine Tidings. 96. July–August 1986. Archived from the original on 17 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-08-01.
^ Enerson, Ole Daniel. "Jean-Martin Charcot". Whonamedit?. Archived from the original on 14 May 2011. Retrieved 2011-04-11.
^ Charcot, J.-M. (1868). "Histologie de la sclerose en plaques". Gazette des Hopitaux. 41. Paris: 554–55.
^ Coe, Brian (1978). Colour Photography: the first hundred years 1840-1940. London: Ash & Grant. ISBN 0-904069-24-9.
^ No 79985.
^ Ferragus (1868-01-23). "La littérature putride". Le Figaro. Paris.
^ "Bicycle Racing in France : The Origins". Archived from the original on 2014-05-09. Retrieved May 6, 2013.