August 15 - Sir Walter Scott, Scottish novelist and poet (d. 1832)
October 1 - Pierre Baillot, French violinist and composer (d. 1842)
November 14 - Marie François Xavier Bichat, French anatomist and physiologist (d. 1802)
December 25 - Dorothy Wordsworth, English diarist and sister of William Wordsworth (d. 1855)
December 26 - Julie Clary, queen consort of Naples (d. 1845)
Deaths
January 11 - Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens
May 21 - Christopher Smart, English poet (b. 1722)
July 30 - Thomas Gray, English poet and letter-writer (b. 1716)
September 17 - Tobias Smollett, Scottish novelist (b. 1721)
November 13 - Konrad Ernst Ackermann, German actor (b. 1712)
December 6 - Giovanni Battista Morgagni, Italian anatomist (b. 1682)
Events
January 22 - Spain cedes Port Egmont in the Falkland Islands to England.
February 12 - Gustav III becomes the King of Sweden.
May 16 - The Battle of Alamance, a pre-American Revolutionary War battle between local militia and a group of rebels called "The Regulators", occurs in present-day Alamance County, North Carolina.
July 14 - Foundation of the Mission San Antonio de Padua in modern California by the Franciscan friar JunÃpero Serra.
July 17 - Bloody Falls Massacre: Chipewyan chief Matonabbee, traveling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland journey, massacres a group of unsuspecting Inuit.
October 9 - The Dutch merchant ship Vrouw Maria sinks near the coast of Finland.
