Marie Skłodowska-Curie, the first person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, is born in Warsaw.
France seizes Vĩnh Long, An Giang and Hà Tiên, completing the colony of French Cochinchina.
Gregor Mendel publishes his pea-plant hybridisation experiments in Brno; the work is widely recognised only after 1900.
James Clerk Maxwell publishes "A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field", unifying electricity, magnetism and light.
Dmitri Mendeleev arranges the chemical elements by atomic weight and properties, predicting elements not yet discovered.
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, later known as Lenin, leader of the October Revolution, is born in Simbirsk.
Prussia and its German allies defeat France, bringing down the Second French Empire and paving the way for German unification.