Events

• Alessandro Volta and La Place[?] discover electricity
• February-October - Irish Rebellion[?]
• May 24 - Irish Rebellion[?]: Irish nationalists rebel against British occupation forces believing that French troops were going to invade Ireland.
• June 12 - French take Malta
• July - Napoleon invades Egypt
• July 7 - - US Congress rescinds treaties with France; Quasi-War begins
• August 2 - French navy under admiral Bruyes[?] loses and Horatio Nelson wins Battle of the Nile
• September 18 - Lyrical Ballads published anonymously by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth

• first (anonymous) publication of An Essay on the Principle of Population by Thomas Malthus
• Franz Xaver, Baron Von Zach, Scientific Editor, Astronomer, begins editing journals about navigation and the geographic positions of cities.

Arts, Sciences, Literature and Philosophy

• 1798 in literature:
  • September 18 - Lyrical Ballads published anonymously by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth

Births

• January 14 - Johan Rudolf Thorbecke, Dutch politician
• March 13 - Abigail Fillmore[?], First Lady
• March 30 - Luise Hensel[?], poet (+ 1876)
• April 2 - August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben[?], lyricist (+ 1874, writer of "Das Lied der Deutschen")
• April 26 - Eugene Delacroix, painter
• April 28 - Duncan Forbes, linguist
• October 2 - Charles Albert of Savoy, King of Sardinia

Deaths

• December 4 - Luigi Galvani, physicist