| 1730–1807 | UK [newspapers] | The Daily Advertiser is launched in London, England. With its dependence on advertisements, this may be regarded as the first modern newspaper. |
| 1794 | Austria [orchestral music] | The Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn completes his Symphony No. 100, the Military; and No. 101, the Clock. |
| 1794 | England [poetry] | The English poet and artist William Blake publishes Songs of Innocence and Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul. Songs of Innocence had appeared in 1789. |
| 1794 | England, USA [religion] | The English-born US revolutionary Thomas Paine publishes the first volume of his work The Age of Reason. An outspoken attack on traditional religious belief and practices, it is widely condemned as immoral. The last volume appears in 1796. |
| 1794 | France [everyday life] | The tricolor is adopted as the national flag of France. |
| 1794 | USA [manufacturing] | US inventor Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin, which separates the cotton seeds from the fibre, facilitating the production of short staple cotton, which can be grown throughout the southeastern USA. Over the next decade, US cotton production will soar from £140,000 to £35 million. |
| 1794 | England [Christianity] | The English theologian William Paley publishes A View of the Evidences of Christianity, a defence of Christian belief which will achieve great popularity. |
| 1794 | England [energy] | English engineer Robert Street patents the first practical internal combustion engine. |
| 1794 | Europe [clothing and fashion] | Powdering of men's hair goes out of fashion, after over 100 years of popularity in Europe. |
| 1794 | England [fiction] | The English writer Anne Radcliffe publishes The Mysteries of Udolpho, a best-selling Gothic romance. |
| 16 January 1794 | England [births and deaths] | Edward Gibbon, English historian, author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, dies in London, England (57). |
| 5 April 1794 | France [French Revolution] | Georges-Jacques Danton, Jacobin leader in the French Revolution, instrumental in overthrowing the monarchy and establishing France's First Republic, is guillotined in Paris, France, during the ‘Reign of Terror’, following a show trial organized by Maximilien Robespierre, the leader of the Committee of Public Safety (35). |
| 1 June 1794 | UK, France [French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1801)] | The British admiral Richard, Lord Howe, defeats a French fleet in the English Channel in a battle subsequently known in Britain as ‘The Glorious First of June’. |
| 26 June 1794 | Austria-HM, France, Austrian Netherlands, Belgium [French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1801)] | A French army under General Jean-Baptiste Jourdan defeats Austrian forces at Fleurus in the Austrian Netherlands. The Austrian commander, Freidrich Josias, Prince of Saxe-Coburg, evacuates the Austrian Netherlands. |
| 28 July 1794 | France [births and deaths] | Maximilien François Robespierre, French Jacobin leader during the French Revolution, is guillotined in Paris, France (36). |
| 28 July 1794 | France [French Revolution] | In France, a conspiracy by Montagnard moderates and Dantonists against the leader of the Committee of Public Safety, Maximilien Robespierre, succeeds in abolishing the Commune de Paris (municipal government). Robespierre and Louis St-Just are executed. |
