1856 births

Marie-Louis-Georges Colomb (Lure, Haute-Saône, 25 May 1856 – Nyons, 3 January 1945) was a French botanist, science populariser, and a pioneer of French comics, known as bandes dessinées .
Under the pseudonym Christophe (playing on "Christophe Colomb", the French name for Columbus), Colomb created comics that were popular among the French intelligentsia, yet were published in Le Petit Français illustré, a children's paper. His popular L'idée fixe du savant Cosinus (1893–1899) featured a brilliant, absent-minded scientist. His other comics included La Famille Fenouillard (probably the first French comic, 1889); Le Sapeur Camember (1890–1896); Les Malices de Plick et Plock (1893–1904); and Le Baron de Cramoisy (1899).
Colomb's works were comic sketches exploring the quirks of his title characters. Images to him were more vital than words in communicating with children (the dialogue and Colomb's editorial remarks were always outside the picture frame). His frames have been said to anticipate the "visual grammar" of movies and television.Colomb retired as Deputy Director of the Sorbonne's botanical laboratory.
Novelist Marcel Proust was a student of Colomb in his youth, and seems to have taken an interest in botany from him—Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time) presents botanical knowledge and speculation to such an extent that botany "constitutes an alternative lens through which the human world of the novel can be viewed."

Maurice Koechlin (8 March 1856 – 14 January 1946) was a Franco-Swiss structural engineer from the Koechlin family.

Camille Périer (1856–1935), known by his stage name Kam-Hill, was a French cabaret performer and singer in Paris. He was the son of a musician at the Opéra-Comique and brother of the famous opera and operetta singer Jean Périer.He began to sing from the lyric repertoire around 1885 in salons, before making his real debut at the Gaîté Montparnasse in 1890 in his trademark bizarre costume resembling a rider, with red coat, black silk trousers, a top hat and white gloves; he even sang on horseback at the Nouveau Cirque in Paris. Yvette Guilbert and Kam-Hill appeared together regularly, often singing songs by Tarride. He also appeared at the Eldorado, the La Scala, the Ambassadeurs, and the Folies Bergère.
Guilbert and Kam-Hill dominated the café-concert in Paris in the last decade of the 19th century. He recorded several cylinders for Pathé between 1905 and 1907 (some of which have been re-issued on CD), before retiring in 1910.

William Archer (23 September 1856 – 27 December 1924) was a Scottish author, theatre critic, and English spelling reformer based, for most of his career, in London. He was an early advocate of the plays of Henrik Ibsen, and a friend and advocate of George Bernard Shaw.

Henri-Edmond Cross, born Henri-Edmond-Joseph Delacroix, (20 May 1856 – 16 May 1910) was a French painter and printmaker. He is most acclaimed as a master of Neo-Impressionism and he played an important role in shaping the second phase of that movement. He was a significant influence on Henri Matisse and many other artists. His work was instrumental in the development of Fauvism.

Ernesto Schiaparelli (Italian pronunciation: [erˈnɛsto skjapaˈrɛlli]; July 12, 1856 – February 14, 1928) was an Italian Egyptologist.

J.-H. Rosny aîné was the pseudonym of Joseph Henri Honoré Boex (17 February 1856 – 11 February 1940). He is a French author of Belgian origin, he is considered as one of the founding figures of the modern science fiction[citation needed] . Born in Brussels in 1856. He wrote in French in collaboration with his younger-brother Séraphin Justin François Boex under the pen name J.-H. Rosny until 1909. After they ended their collaboration, Joseph Boex continued to write under the name "Rosny aîné" (Rosny the Elder) while his brother used J.-H. Rosny jeune (Rosny the Younger).

Andrew Seth, FBA, DCL (1856, Edinburgh – 1931, The Haining, Selkirkshire), who changed his name to Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison in 1898 to fulfill the terms of a bequest, was a Scottish philosopher.
His brother was James Seth, also a philosopher.

Louis-Gustave Binger (French pronunciation: [lwi ɡystav bɛ̃ʒe]; 14 October 1856 – 10 November 1936) was a French officer and explorer who claimed the Côte d'Ivoire for France.
Binger was born at Strasbourg in the Bas-Rhin departement. In 1887 he traveled from Senegal up to the Niger River, arriving at Grand Bassam in 1889. During this expedition he discovered that the Mountains of Kong did not exist. He described this journey in his work Du Niger au golfe de Guinée par le pays de Kong et le Mossi (From the Niger to the Gulf of Guinea though the land of the Kong and the Mossi) (1891).In 1892 he returned to the Guinea Coast to superintend the forming of the boundaries between the British and French colonies. In 1893 Binger was appointed governor of the Côte d'Ivoire, where he remained until 1898. He returned to France that year, to an administrative post in Paris at the French Colonial Ministry. In 1899 the Royal Geographical Society awarded him their Founder's Medal for his exploratory work.Louis Gustave Binger died at L'Isle-Adam, Île-de-France, France and was buried in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. The city of Bingerville in the Ivory Coast is named after him.