Events:

• March 7 - Napoleon I of France captures Jaffa in Palestine and his troops procede to kill more than 2,000 Albanian captives.
• March 29 - New York passes a law aimed at gradually abolishing slavery in the state
• July - The Rosetta Stone is discovered.
• November 9 - Napoleon overthrew the French Directory
• December - Napoleon becomes First Consul
• The Dutch East India Company is dissolved.

Arts, Sciences, Literature and Philosophy

• 1799 in literature:
  • The Gipsy Countess[?] - Elizabeth Gunning
  • The East Indian[?] - Mary Julia Young[?]

Births:

• May 13 - Catherine Gore[?], author (+ 1861)
• May 20- Honoré de Balzac, French author
• May 21 - Mary Anning, British paleontologist
• May 26 - Aleksandr Pushkin, Russian author
• July 4 - King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway
• June 18 - Prosper Ménière, French physician
• September 8 - James Bowman Lindsay, Scottish inventor
• December 30 - David Douglas, Scottish botanist
• Jedediah Smith United States fur trapper and explorer

Deaths:

• January 17 - Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian mathematician
• February 19 - Jean-Charles de Borda, French mathematician, physicist, political scientist, and sailor
• May 4 - Tipu Sultan, Indian ruler
• May 18 - Pierre Beaumarchais, French writer
• June 6 - Patrick Henry, American revolutionary politician
• August 2 - Jacques Étienne Montgolfier, French inventor
• August 4 - John Bacon - British sculptor
• August 29 - Pope Pius VI
• October 6 - William Withering, British doctor
• December 14 - George Washington, first president of the United States
• Étienne-Louis Boullée, French architect