Dutch painter Vincent Willem van Gogh moves from Antwerp to Paris

US author Frances Hodgson Burnett publishes Little Lord Fauntleroy, featuring an aristocratic child in a velvet suit

France brings Cambodia and Vietnam into a federation of protectorates under the title French Indochina

Vincent van Gogh invites Paul Gauguin to come and paint with him at Arles, in the south of France

Vincent van Gogh enters a psychiatric asylum in St Rémy as a voluntary patient

The Second International is established by the Socialist parties of ten nations, meeting at a congress in Paris

France and Britain agree colonial boundaries for Senegal and Gambia in west Africa

The French chef Auguste Escoffier creates and names a dessert in honour of the Australian soprano Nellie Melba

De Lesseps, on trial for his management of the Panama Canal company, is sentenced to five years in prison

France claims the Ivory Coast (or Côte d'Ivoire) in west Africa as a French colony

France incorporates Laos within French Indochina

France and Russia, alarmed by Germany's ambitions, sign a defensive Franco-Russian alliance

Claude Debussy's tone poem L'Après-midi d'un faune has its premiere in Paris

The first competitive event for cars is held over a distance of 78 miles from Paris to Rouen

General Alfred von Schlieffen devises plans for a potential two-pronged attack against France and Russia in a swift war

French physicist Antoine Henri Becquerel discovers in uranium salt the phenomenon of natural radioactivity

Émile Zola sends an open letter to the French president, headed 'J'accuse!', drawing attention to the injustice done to Alfred Dreyfus

Marie Curie and her husband Pierre isolate a new element which they name polonium in honour of her native Poland

Marie and Pierre Curie isolate the element radium, working without any protection because unaware of the danger of radioactivity

Belgian racing driver Camille Jenatzy is the first to drive faster than a mile a minute, reaching 65 mph in an electric car at Achères in France

At a retrial of Alfred Dreyfus a new court martial confirms his conviction for treason

Ten days after the court martial's verdict, Alfred Dreyfus is given a pardon by the president of France

Gustave Charpentier's opera Louise has Paris premiere at the Opéra-Comique

A change of palette by Pablo Picasso takes him into what becomes known as his Blue Period

French automobile pioneer Leon Serpollet sets a new land speed record, driving a steam car at 75 mph along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice