1880 in France
Events from the year 1880 in France.
Incumbents
Events
- 29 June – France annexes Tahiti.
- Musée Carnavalet is opened to the public as a museum of Paris history.
- Discovery of piezoelectricity by Pierre Curie and Jacques Curie.
Literature
- Pierre Loti - Le Mariage de Loti
- Émile Zola
- * L'Inondation
- * Nana
- Jules Verne - ''La Maison à vapeur''
Music
Births
- 14 January – Pierre-Marie Gerlier, Cardinal
- 5 February – Gabriel Voisin, aviation pioneer
- 20 February – Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, aristocrat, novelist and poet
- 21 February – Pierre Chaumié, politician
- 17 April – Jacques Suzanne, painter, artist and explorer
- 25 May – Jean Alexandre Barré, neurologist
- 26 August – Guillaume Apollinaire, poet, writer and art critic
- 12 October – Marcel-Bruno Gensoul, admiral
- 8 December – Clément-Emile Roques, Cardinal
Full date unknown
- Charles Catteau, industrial designer
- Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht, composer and conductor
Deaths
- 4 January – Marthe Camille Bachasson, Count of Montalivet, statesman and Peer of France
- 17 January – Agenor, duc de Gramont, diplomat and statesman
- 31 January – Adolphe Granier de Cassagnac, journalist and politician
- 8 May – Gustave Flaubert, novelist
- 24 June – Jules Antoine Lissajous, mathematician
- 9 July – Paul Broca, physician, anatomist, and anthropologist
- 5 October - Jacques Offenbach, German composer
- 22 October - Alphonse Pénaud, aeronautical pioneer
- 10 November – Sabin Berthelot, naturalist and ethnologist
- 20 November – Léon Cogniet, painter
- 24 November – Napoléon Henri Reber, composer