1872 in France
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{{Year in France header}}
Events from the year 1872 in France.
Incumbents
Events
- 27 November - Meteor shower display over France.
- Louis Ducos du Hauron creates an early color photograph.{{Cite web|url=http://www.worldisround.com/articles/2378/photo2.html|title=World is Round|access-date=2008-04-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080326185516/http://www.worldisround.com/articles/2378/photo2.html|archive-date=2008-03-26|url-status=dead}}
- Chargeurs established as a shipping company.
- S. T. Dupont begins manufacture of luxury leather goods.
Arts and literature
- 22 May - Georges Bizet's comic opera Djamileh is premièred at the Opéra-Comique in Paris.
- 13 November (07:35) (probable date) - Claude Monet begins painting Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant, the painting that will give a name to Impressionism) as viewed from his hotel room at Le Havre.{{cite book|first=Donald W.|last=Olson|chapter=Dating Impression, Sunrise|title=Monet's Impression, Sunrise: the biography of a painting|location=Paris|publisher=Éditions Hazan; Musée Marmottan Monet|year=2014|isbn=978-0-300-21088-0|pages=80–105}}
Births
- 16 January - Henri Büsser, composer and conductor (died 1973)
- 18 January - Prince Emmanuel, Duke of Vendôme, noble from the House of Orléans (died 1931)
- 24 February - Gustave Sandras, artistic gymnast (died 1951)
- 26 March - Émile Armand, individualist anarchist (died 1962)
- 7 June - Rodolphe d'Erlanger, painter and musicologist (died 1932)
- 1 July - Louis Blériot, inventor, engineer and aviation pioneer (died 1936)
- 2 July - Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault, psychiatrist (died 1934)
- 15 July - Jean Dargassies, racing cyclist (died 1965)
- 28 July - Albert Sarraut, politician, twice Prime Minister of France (died 1962)
- 22 September - Octave Denis Victor Guillonnet, painter (died 1967)
- 17 October – Madeleine Rolland, translator and peace activist (died 1960)
- 30 November - Maurice de la Taille, priest and writer (died 1933)
- 12 December - Daniel Halévy, historian (died 1962)
=Full date unknown=
- Léon Bouly, inventor of the cinématographe (died 1932)
- François-Victor Équilbecq, author (died 1917)
- Colette Reynaud, feminist, socialist and pacifist journalist (died 1965)
Deaths
=January to June=
- 6 February - Auguste Joseph Alphonse Gratry, author and theologian (born 1805)
- 31 March - Jules Guyot, physician and agronomist (born 1807)
- 5 April - Paul Auguste Ernest Laugier, astronomer (born 1812)
- 28 April - Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, photographer (born 1802)
- 20 June - Elie Frédéric Forey, Marshal of France (born 1804)
- 27 June - Michel Carré, librettist (born 1821)
=July to December=
- 5 July - Charles-Pierre Denonvilliers, surgeon (born 1808)
- 4 October - Jean-Jacques Bourassé, priest, archaeologist and historian (born 1813)
- 21 October - Jacques Babinet, physicist, mathematician and astronomer (born 1794)
- 23 October - Théophile Gautier, poet, novelist, journalist, dramatist and literary critic (born 1811)
- 29 October - Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant, chess master (born 1800)
- 6 December - Félix Archimède Pouchet, naturalist (born 1800)
- 10 December - Étienne Arnal, actor (born 1794)
- December - Jean-Baptiste Honoré Raymond Capefigue, historian and biographer (born 1801)
=Full date unknown=
- Ximénès Doudan, journalist (born 1800)