1798

• French philosopher Auguste Comte.
• Canadian geologist William Edmond Logan.
• French painter Eugène Ferdinand Victor Delacroix.
• German mathematician Christof Gudermann.
• Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi.
• German painter Karl Blechen.
• French historian Jules Michelet.
• Scottish astronomer Thomas Henderson.
• Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz.
• British physician Thomas Hodgkin, describer of Hodgkin's Disease.

• (November 19) Irish rebel Theobald Wolfe Tone, suicide while awaiting execution.
• Anglo-Irish aristocrat and rebel, Lord Edward Fitzgerald.
• English mathematician Edward Waring.
• British explorer George Vancouver.
• Irish composer Walter Claggett.
• Italian adventurer and writer Giovanni Giacomo Casanova.
• Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani.
• Stanislaw II Poniatowski, last king of Poland.

• Heavy-handed tactics against the United Irishmen trigger a widespread rebellion in Ireland, against corrupt English colonial rule.  A desperate, bloody affair, pitting peasants with pitchforks against artillery; 35,000 people are killed during the rebellion.  It is led by the United Irishmen under Theobald Wolfe Tone.  This organization is mostly Protestant but the rebellion has a wide support throughout all levels of Irish society. brittanica.com characterizes the rebellion as a "Catholic uprising".
• (March) Most of the Dublin leadership of the United Irishmen is arrested, where Lord Fitzgerald is mortally wounded..
• (May 22-23) The United Irishmen manage to raise a rebellion in Leinster, which quickly spreads to Wexford.  Ulster and Sligo are heavily involved.
• Theobald Wolfe Tone, leader of The United Irishmen, convinces the French to send troops to Ireland.
• (June 21) The Wexford rebels are crushed at Vinegar Hill.
• (August 11) 1100 French soldiers under General Humbert land in County Mayo.   After collecting hundreds of Irish volunteers, Humbert exhausts his army by marching it across Ireland to attempt Dublin.  Meanwhile Lord Charles Cornwallis is amassing a huge army of Loyalists and British regulars.
• (September 16) Humbert surrenders.  The French soldiers are allowed to return home; the Irish rebels are hanged or transported to Australia.
• Lord Charles Cornwallis suggests that an Act of Union making Ireland part of the United Kingdom would prevent further rebellion.
• (March 5) the French army captures Berne, extinguishing the Swiss Confederation. In its place, the French Directory sets up a puppet Helvetian Republic . All men in Switzerland aged 20 or more are required by law to sign an Oath of Allegiance to the new republic.
• Napoleon Bonaparte, needing something to do to while away the hours, decides that an invasion of Egypt is just the thing.
• (June 11) While transporting an army across the Mediterranean Napoleon captures Malta from the Knights of St John.
• (July 1) Bonaparte lands at Abu Qir Bay (Aboukir Bay).
• (July 2) Alexandria taken.
• (July 21) Napoleon's army routs the Mamlukes at Imbaba. Napoleon styles his victory the Battle of the Pyramids, and occupies Cairo.
• Napoleon brings in scientists who make the first Western studies of ancient Egyptian ruins, and recognize the Rosetta Stone as something important when some French soldiers find it incorporated into a wall.
• (August 1) Horatio Nelson destroys the French fleet at Abu Qir Bay. Nelson styles his victory the Battle of the Nile.
• (September 11) The Ottoman Empire declares war on France.
• (October 21) An Ottoman-inspired revolt is suppressed with artillery.  What worked against the Paris Sections in 1796 engenders the hatred of all Egypt.
• The United States is in a fury over The XYZ Affair of the previous year, as well as continuing harassment of American shipping by France.
• (Feb 9) The USS Constellation under Thomas Truxtun captures the French frigate Insurgente.
• (March 19) President John Adams tells Congress that the United States is in a state of Quasi-War with France.
• (April) Foreign Minister Talleyrand orders two members of the American delegation to leave.
• (April 30) President John Adams signs a bill creating the Navy Department to counter French and Barbary pirate harrassment.  Commodore John Barry commands a fleet of six frigates and several revenue cutters.
• (July 6) The United States Congress passes the Alien Act, allowing the arrest of enemy aliens after a presidential proclamation of war.
• (July 11) Congress creates the Marine Corps.
• (July 14) Congress passes the Sedition Act, prohibiting the publication of "false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States".
• (December) Talleyrand, needing to have at least one country not at war with France, offers to stop French harassment of American shipment, without a bribe.
• (December 24) Virginia passes a resolution condemning the Alien and Sedition Acts.
• King Kamehamaha bans all pearl divers (except his own) from Pearl Harbor.
• Thomas Malthus publishes his famous Essay on the Principle of Population.
• The English Romantic Movement is begun by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, who publish a collection of Lyrical Ballads, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey.

1797 - 1798 - 1799