1796 was a leap year starting on Friday. (see link for calendar)

Events

• February 1 - The capital of Upper Canada is moved from Newark to York
• March 9 - Widow Joséphine de Beauharnais marries General Napoléon Bonaparte.
• March 30 - Carl Gauss obtained conditions for the constructibility by ruler and compass of regular polygons and was able to announce that the regular 17-gon was constructible by ruler and compasses.
• April 2 - The only night of would-be Shakespearean play of Vortigern and Rowena (actually written by William Henry Ireland)
• May 10 - First Coalition: Gen. Napoleon Bonaparte wins a decisive victory against Austrian forces at Lodi bridge over the River Adda in Italy. The Austrians lose some 2,000 men.
• May 14 - Edward Jenner administers the first smallpox vaccination.
• May 15 - Napoleon's troops take Milan
• June 1 - Tennessee is admitted as the 16th U.S. state.
• July 11 - The U.S. takes possession of Detroit from Great Britain under terms of the Jay Treaty.
• July 22 - Surveyors of the Connecticut Land Company name an area in Ohio "Cleveland" after Gen. Moses Cleaveland, the superintendent of the surveying party.
• September 8 - French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of Bassano - French forces defeat Austrian troops at Bassano.
• November: John Adams defeats Thomas Jefferson in U.S. presidential election
• November 4 - The Treaty of Tripoli (between the United States and Tripoli) is signed at Tripoli (see also 1797)
• November 17 November 6 Old Style - Catherine II of Russia called Catherine "The Great" dies and is succeeded by her son Paul I of Russia. His wife Sophie Marie Dorothea of Württemberg becomes Empress consort.
• November 17 - French Revolutionary Wars: Battle of Arcole - French forces defeat the Austrians in Italy.
• December 7 - U.S. Electoral College meets to elect John Adams president

• British government purchase a 40 acre (162,000 m²) site at Norman Cross the first purposely built prisoner of war camp in England at that time.
• Mungo Park visits Segu kingdom
• The Qianlong Emperor abdicates at age 84 to make way for his son, the Jiaqing Emperor.
• The British seize Ceylon from the Dutch.

Ongoing events

• French Revolution (1789-1799)
• French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802)-First Coalition

Births

• January 25 - William MacGillivray, Scottish naturalist and ornithologist (d. 1852)
• February 22 - Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet, Belgian mathematician (d. 1874)
• May 1 - Junius Brutus Booth, English actor (d. 1852)
• May 4 - Horace Mann, American educator and abolitionist (d. 1859)
• July 6 - Emperor Nicholas I of Russia
• July 23 - Franz Berwald, composer
• August 15 - John Torrey, American botanist
• August 25 - James Lick, California land baron (d. 1876)
• September 19 - Hartley Coleridge, British poet
• October 23 - Stefano Franscini, member of the Swiss Federal Council (d. 1857)
• November 30 - Carl Loewe, composer

Deaths

• February 23 - Jean-Nicolas Stofflet, French Revolution figure
• July 21 - Robert Burns, Scots poet
• September 21 - François Séverin Marceau-Desgraviers, French General (b. 1769)
• November 6 - Catherine the Great of Russia