diff --git a/src/manipulation.js b/src/manipulation.js
index d8f51a17..708de893 100644
--- a/src/manipulation.js
+++ b/src/manipulation.js
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@ var rinlinejQuery = / jQuery\d+="(?:\d+|null)"/g,
 	rselfClosing = /^(?:area|br|col|embed|hr|img|input|link|meta|param)$/i,
 	rtagName = /<([\w:]+)/,
 	rtbody = /<tbody/i,
-	rhtml = /<|&\w+;/,
+	rhtml = /<|&#?\w+;/,
 	rnocache = /<script|<object|<embed/i,
 	rchecked = /checked\s*(?:[^=]|=\s*.checked.)/i,  // checked="checked" or checked (html5)
 	fcloseTag = function( all, front, tag ) {
diff --git a/test/unit/manipulation.js b/test/unit/manipulation.js
index 1e69340b..e6e6c8d9 100644
--- a/test/unit/manipulation.js
+++ b/test/unit/manipulation.js
@@ -851,7 +851,7 @@ test("clone() on XML nodes", function() {
 }
 
 var testHtml = function(valueObj) {
-	expect(24);
+	expect(26);
 
 	jQuery.scriptorder = 0;
 
@@ -868,6 +868,9 @@ var testHtml = function(valueObj) {
 	equals( div.children().length, 2, "Make sure two child nodes exist." );
 	equals( div.children().children().length, 1, "Make sure that a grandchild exists." );
 
+	equals( jQuery("<div/>").html(valueObj("&#160;"))[0].innerHTML, "&nbsp;", "Make sure entities are passed through correctly." );
+	equals( jQuery("<div/>").html(valueObj("&amp;"))[0].innerHTML, "&amp;", "Make sure entities are passed through correctly." );
+
 	reset();
 	// using contents will get comments regular, text, and comment nodes
 	var j = jQuery("#nonnodes").contents();