1868 in France

• Monarch – Napoleon III

• 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{{cite journal|title=French astronomers in India during the 17th –19th centuries|journal=Journal of the British Astronomical Association|volume=101|issue=2|pages=95–100|bibcode=1991JBAA..101...95K|last=Kochhar|first=R. K.|year=1991}} (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.{{cite journal|url=http://www.wampumkeeper.com/wineblight.html|title=The Great French Wine Blight|journal=Wine Tidings|volume=96 |access-date=2011-08-01| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110717235415/http://www.wampumkeeper.com/wineblight.html| archive-date= 17 July 2011 | url-status= usurped |date=July–August 1986}}
• Jean-Martin Charcot describes and names multiple sclerosis.{{cite web|url=http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/19.html|title=Jean-Martin Charcot|work=Whonamedit?|last=Enerson|first=Ole Daniel|access-date=2011-04-11| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20110514000108/http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/19.html| archive-date= 14 May 2011 | url-status= live}}{{cite journal|author=Charcot, J.-M.|title= Histologie de la sclerose en plaques|journal=Gazette des Hopitaux|location=Paris|year=1868|volume=41|pages= 554–55}}
• Louis Arthur Ducos du Hauron patents methods of color photography.{{cite book|last=Coe|first=Brian|title=Colour Photography: the first hundred years 1840-1940|year=1978|location=London|publisher=Ash & Grant|isbn=0-904069-24-9}}
• Ernest and Auguste Bollée first patent the Éolienne Bollée wind turbine.No 79985.

• January - Émile Zola defends his first major novel, Thérèse Raquin (1867), against charges of pornography and corruption of morals.{{cite news|author-link=Louis Ulbach|author=Ferragus|title=La littérature putride|newspaper=Le Figaro|location=Paris|date=1868-01-23}}
• 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.{{cite web|title=Bicycle Racing in France : The Origins|url=http://www.indiansinparis.com/blog/roots/237-bicycle-races-in-france-a-short-history|access-date=May 6, 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140509001426/http://www.indiansinparis.com/blog/roots/237-bicycle-races-in-france-a-short-history|archive-date=2014-05-09|url-status=dead}}

• 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)

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Category:1860s in France