1850 in France

Events

• 15 April - Angers Bridge collapses with around 480 soldiers marching across it; about 226 are killed.
• 16 May - Battleship Le Napoléon is launched.
• France begins to transport colonists to Algeria.

Births

• 14 January - Pierre Loti, sailor and writer
• 31 May - Alphonse Pénaud, aeronautical pioneer
• 5 August - Guy de Maupassant, writer
• 6 August - Henri Chantavoine, writer
• 25 August - Charles Richet, physiologist, awarded Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1913

Deaths

January to June

• 22 January - William Joseph Chaminade, priest, beatified
• 22 March - Sophie d'Arbouville, writer
• 16 April - Marie Tussaud, wax sculptor
• 1 May - Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville, zoologist and anatomist
• 9 May - Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, chemist and physicist

July to December

• 18 August - Honoré de Balzac, novelist and playwright
• 26 August - Louis-Philippe of France, last king of France
• 9 November - François-Xavier-Joseph Droz, writer on ethics, political science and political economy
• 10 December - François Sulpice Beudant, mineralogist and geologist
• 24 December - Frédéric Bastiat, writer and political economist

Full date unknown

• Armand-Benjamin Caillau, Roman Catholic priest, a missionary and writer