| January 1 | "Daily Universal Register" (Times of London) publishes 1st issue |
| January 7 | 1st balloon flight across English Channel (Blanchard and Jeffries) |
| January 11 | Continental Congress convenes in New York City |
| January 13 | John Walter publishes 1st issue of London Times |
| January 14 | Mozart completes "Dissonantenkwartet" (opus 10) |
| January 15 | Mozarts string quartet opus 10 premieres |
| January 20 | Samuel Ellis advertises to sell Oyster Island (Ellis Island), no takers |
| January 27 | 1st U.S. state university chartered, Athens Georgia |
| March 1 | Philadelphia Society for the Promotion of Agriculture organized |
| April 21 | Russian tsarina Catharina II ends noble privileges |
| May 9 | British inventor Joseph Bramah patents beer-pump handle |
| May 23 | Benjamin Franklin announces his invention of bifocals |
| June 15 | 2 French balloonists die in world's 1st fatal aviation accident |
| July 6 | Congress resolves U.S. currency named "dollar" and adopts decimal coinage |
| July 12 | 1st manned flight by gas balloon in Netherlands |
| August 1 | Caroline Herschel becomes 1st woman discoverer of a comet |
| August 15 | French cardinal De Rohan arrested |
| September 1 | Mozart publishes 6 string quartet opus 10 in Vienna |
| September 10 | Prussia signs trade agreement with US |
| September 28 | Napoleon Bonaparte (16) graduates from the military academy in Paris (42nd in a class of 51) |
| September 29 | Chasidic sect is excommunicated in Cracow Poland |
| November 10 | Netherlands and France signs treaty |
| November 17 | Church of England organizes in New England |
