1786 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar).

Events

• May 21 - Trial of the Necklace affair ends in Paris
• August 8 - Mont Blanc was climbed for the first time by Dr. Michael-Gabriel Paccard and Jacques Balmat .
• September 2 – Hurricane in England
• Choctaw Treaty
• Chickasaw Treaty
• Robert Burns publishes Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect
• Francis Light acquires the island of Penang from the Sultan of Kedah on behalf of the British East India Company. It is the first British colony in South-East Asia.
• Anglo-Spanish treaty gives Belize to Britain
• First ship of convicts leaves Britain for Botany Bay, Australia - 820 out of 1138 aboard are convicts
• The trade with Iceland is opened to all Danish and Norwegian traders.
• The Mozart opera "The Marriage of Figaro" is premiered in Vienna

Births

• January 8 - Nicholas Biddle, President of the Second Bank of the United States (d. 1844)
• January 12 - Sir Robert Inglis, Bt, English politician (d. 1855)
• January 23 - Auguste de Montferrand, architect (d. 1858)
• February 24 - Wilhelm Grimm, philologist, folklorist (d. 1859)
• March 22 - Joachim Lelewel, Polish nationalist historian (d. 1861)
• June 13 - Winfield Scott, American general and presidential candidate (d. 1866)
• August 17 - David "Davy" Crockett (d. 1836)
• August 25 - Ludwig I, King of Bavaria (d. 1868)
• September 18 - King Christian VIII of Denmark
• September 24 - Charles Bianconi, Italian-Irish entrepreneur.
• November 18/December 18 - Carl Maria von Weber, German composer
• Henry Bishop , English composer
• September 11 - Friedrich Kuhlau, German composer
• December 12 - William L. Marcy, American statesman (d. 1857)
• Balusvami Dikshitar , brother of composer Muttuswami Dikshitar and introducer of the violin into Carnatic music

Deaths

• May 19 - John Stanley, English composer
• May 21 - Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Swedish chemist
• August 17 - Friedrich II the Great, or Frederick the Great, of Prussia