• Italian composer Gioacchino Rossini.
• English poet Percy Bysse Shelley.
• English illustrator George Cruikshank.
• French physicist and mathematician Gaspard Gustave de Coriolis.
• Mexican revolutionary and statesman Lucas Alamán.
• English astronomer John Herschel, son of William Herschel.
• Scottish geologist Roderick Impey Murchison.
• American "evangelist" Charles Grandison Finney.
• Giovanni Maria Mastai-Ferretti, the future Pope Pius IX.

• Swedish composer Joseph Martin Kraus.
• Mohegan author, hymnist, and theologian Samson Occum.
• Lord Frederick North, Prime minister of Great Britain during the American Revolution.
• English painter George Hayter.
• French chess celebrity M. de Kermur, Sire de Légal.
• Italian composer Antonio Rosetti.
• American naval pioneer John Paul Jones.
• Austrian emperor Leopold II.
• King Gustav III of Sweden, assassinated at a masquerade ball.
• John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich, the one for which the Sandwich Islands were named.
• (April 25) Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier, first victim of the guillotine.

• Mary Wollstonecraft publishes her treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
• The United States government announces a competition for the design of a Capitol building in the new federal city Washington, DC, with a prize of $500.
• Opponents of the Federalist Party, led by Thomas Jefferson, form a new political party. It is called the Republican Party (although it is the forerunner of today's Democratic Party).
• George Washington is re-elected President of the United States, winning all 15 states.
• The Maryland State House dome is completed in Annapolis.
• Welsh bards revive their ancient conclave, the Eisteddfod.
• The British Parliament passes the Libel Act requiring a jury to decide libel where it only took a judge before. At the same time they restrict freedom of the press.
• Some Polish noblemen "ask" Russia for help against the new government created by the Constitution adopted the previous year.  Russia gladly obliges, and Prussia decides to join in as well.
• (January 9) With the Treaty of Jassy, Russia and Austria relieve the Ottoman Empire of much of its territory, including Hungary. Turkey is officially the "Sick man of Europe."
• Things begin to get downright ugly in France:
• (March 1) Emperor Franz II succeeds to the throne of Austria.
• (April 20) King Louis XVI and the Legislative Assembly agree to declare war on Austria and Prussia.
• (April 24) Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle composes a song that would later be the national anthem for France, La Marseillaise.
• (June 20) A mob of 15,000 marches on the Tuilieries Palace; the King dresses up like a revolutionary.
• (June 28) Lafayette calls for the abolition of the Jacobin clubs.
• (July 25) Most of the rest of Europe declares war on France (Brunswick Manifesto).
• (August) Prussian and Austrian armies invade Northeastern France.
• (August 10) A mob of 30,000 storms the Tuileries Palace looking for King Louis, who had been warned and fled.  The mob takes its anger out on the people left behind: some Swiss Guards and all of the palace staff.  There is a macabre scene of piles of mutilated dead bodies and children playing with human heads. Louis flees for protection to the Legislative Assembly, who hands him over.
• (August 12) The royal family is put into prison.
• (August 19) Lafayette flees to Austria where he is imprisoned.
• (September 2-6) Following the fall of Verdun to the Prussians, thousands of political prisoners are killed in what is later termed the "September Massacres".
• (September 3)  The monarchy is abolished; the First Republic is proclaimed.
• (September 13) Thomas Paine flees to France.
• (september 20) The French army somehow defeats the Prussians at the Battle of Valmy, then push into Holland.
• (October 22) The French capture Mainz in Prussia's Rhine province.
• (November 6) A different French army defeats Austria at the Battle of Jemappes.
• (November 20) John Reeves founds the Association for Preserving Liberty and Property which begins harassing pro-reform writers and publishers in Britain, with charges of sedition and libel.
• (December 10) Louis is put on trial after his letters are discovered.
• (December 18) Thomas Paine is convicted of sedition in absentia and sentenced to hang.

1791 - 1792 - 1793