1858 in France

Decades:	1830s; 1840s; 1850s; 1860s; 1870s;
See also:	Other events of 1858; History of France • Timeline • Years

Events from the year 1858 in France.

Incumbents

14 January - Orsini affair: Piedmontese revolutionary Felice Orsini and his accomplices fail to assassinate Napoleon III in Paris but their Orsini bombs kill 156 bystanders. Orsini is executed on 13 March by guillotine.
11 February - Lourdes apparitions: Pauper girl Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes, 14, has a vision at the grotto of Massabielle, the first in a series of eighteen events (up to 16 August) which will come to be regarded as Marian apparitions.
August - The first aerial photography is carried out by Nadar, from a tethered balloon.^[1]
September - Cochinchina Campaign: French warships, under Charles Rigault de Genouilly, attack and occupy Da Nang, Vietnam.

21 October - Following the lifting of government licensing restrictions on the number of performers, Jacques Offenbach's first 2-act opéra bouffe, Orpheus in the Underworld (Orphée aux enfers), is premiered at Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens.
Camille Saint-Saëns succeeds Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély as organist of La Madeleine, Paris.

6 January - Sébastien Faure, anarchist, (died 1942)
9 January - Maurice Couette, physicist (died 1943)
21 January - Mélanie Bonis, composer (died 1937)
31 January - André Antoine, actor-manager (died 1943)
7 February - Amédée-François Lamy, military officer (died 1900)
15 April - Émile Durkheim, sociologist (died 1917)
19 May - Roland Bonaparte, prince, president of the Société de Géographie (died 1924)
28 August - Charles le Bargy, actor and film director (died 1936)
August - Guy d'Hardelot (Helen Rhodes, née Guy), composer, pianist and teacher (died 1936)

^ "Brief history of aerial photography". www.findaerialphotography.com. 2007. Retrieved 2015-01-02.