• Italian composer Niccolò Paganini.
• German composer Johann Christian Bach.
• Martin van Buren, eighth President of the United States.
• Irish romantic poet John Field.
• American orator and statesman Daniel Webster.
• English children's poet Ann Taylor.
• French composer Daniel Auber.
• Scottish novelist Susan Edmonstone Ferrier.
• English Charismatic religious leader John Wroe.
• South Carolina statesman John Caldwell Calhoun, Vice-President of the United States under John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson.
• German educator Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel, originator of the kindergarten system.
• Marie Annonciade Caroline Bonaparte, sister of Napoleon Bonaparte .
• American statesman Thomas Hart Benton.

• Mathematician Daniel Bernoulli.
• French architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel.

• War of American Independence:
• (February 4) Minorca submits to the Spanish fleet.
• There is some fighting in the West, mostly notably the (August 19) Battle of Blue Licks in which British troops and Indians attack the settlement of Daniel Boone.   There is a later retaliatory strike by George Rogers Clark.
• (May 8) The spanish capture The Bahamas from the British.
• (September 15) In the climactic attack of the French and Spanish siege of Gibraltar, 40,000 troops attack The Rock with a large naval bombardment.  The Frennch and Spanish suffer heavy losses and fail to take the stronghold.
• (November 30) Great Britain acknowledges the independence of the United States in provisional articles of peace.
• (December 14) The British evacuate Charleston, South Carolina.
• (March) Lord Frederick North resigns as prime minister of Great Britain.  King George III appoints Charles Watson-Wentworth, the Marquis of Rockingham who dies July 1.  The King then appoints William Petty, second Earl of Shelburne to the post.
• Virginia passes a law allowing the Manumission of slaves under certain conditions.
• Thomas Jefferson writes his essay "Commerce between Master and Slave", stating the inherent corruption of slavery and fearing the retribution of God for the institution.  He keeps his slaves, however.
• The Maratha army under Shrimant Madhav Rao defeats a British army, and the Treaty of Salbai ends the first Anglo-Maratha War.
• Bernardo de Galvez appointed governor of Mexico.

1781 - 1782 - 1783