January 5 – Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, begins removal of the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon in Athens, claiming they were at risk of destruction during the Ottoman occupation of Greece; the first shipment departs Piraeus on board Elgin's ship, the Mentor, "with many boxes of moulds and sculptures", including three marble torsos from the Parthenon.
February 3 – French Army General Charles Leclerc and the first 5,000 of 20,000 troops arrive at Cap-Francois (now Cap-Haïtien), to suppress Toussaint L'Ouverture and the rebellion of the black population in Haiti.
February 17 – The remains of Pope Pius VI are returned to the Vatican by France; the Pope had died in captivity at Valence, on August 29, 1799.
March 3 – Ludwig van Beethoven publishes his Piano Sonata No. 14, commonly known as the "Moonlight Sonata" (Mondschein), in Vienna; the availability of the sheet music is announced by Giovanni Cappi in the newspaper Wiener Zeitung.
April 26 – A general amnesty signed by Napoleon allows all but about 1,000 of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France as part of a conciliatory gesture to make peace with the various factions of the Ancien Régime that ultimately consolidates his own rule.
May 19 – Napoleon establishes the French Legion of Honour (Légion d'honneur).
May – Madame Marie Tussaud first exhibits her wax sculptures in London, having been commissioned, during the Reign of Terror in France, to make death masks of the victims.
June – The first account of Thomas Wedgwood's experiments in photography is published by Humphry Davy in the Journal of the Royal Institution in London. Since a fixative for the image has not yet been developed, the early photographs quickly fade.
October 2 – War ends between Sweden and Tripoli. The United States also negotiates peace, but war continues over the size of compensation.
October 15 – French Army General Michel Ney enters Switzerland with 40,000 troops, on orders of Napoleon Bonaparte.
October 16 – The port of New Orleans and the lower Mississippi River are closed to American traffic by order of the city's Spanish administrator, Juan Ventura Morales, threatening the economy in the western United States, and prompting the need for the Louisiana Purchase.
October 26 – A powerful 7.9 earthquake shakes the Romanian district of Vrancea destroying hundreds of buildings, triggering landslides and killing 4 people. This earthquake is considered one of the strongest to have shaken Europe.
November 16 – The newly elected British House of Lords is inaugurated by King George III, who tells the members, "In my intercourse with foreign powers, I have been actuated by a sincere disposition of the maintenance of peace," but adds that "My conduct will be invariably regulated by a due consideration of the actual situation of Europe, and by a watchful solicitude for the permanent welfare of my people."