Year 1798 (MDCCXCVIII) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Friday of the 11-day slower Julian calendar.

Zbigniew Preisner (Polish pronunciation: [ˈzbiɡɲɛf ˈpɾajsnɛɾ]; born 20 May 1955 in Bielsko-Biała as Zbigniew Antoni Kowalski) is a Polish film score composer, best known for his work with film director Krzysztof Kieślowski.

Zbigniew Preisner studied history and philosophy in Kraków. Never having received formal music lessons, he taught himself music by listening and transcribing parts from records. His compositional style represents a distinctively spare form of tonal neo-Romanticism. Paganini and Jean Sibelius are acknowledged influences.

Preisner is best known for the music composed for the films directed by fellow Pole Krzysztof Kieślowski. His Song for the Unification of Europe, based on the Greek text of 1 Corinthians 13, is attributed to a character in Kieślowski's Three Colors: Blue and plays a dominating role in the story. His music for Three Colors: Red includes a setting of Polish and French versions of a poem by Wisława Szymborska, a Polish Nobel Prize-winning poet.

After working with Kieślowski on Three Colors: Blue, Preisner was hired by the producer Francis Ford Coppola to write the score for The Secret Garden, directed by Polish director Agnieszka Holland. Although Preisner is most closely associated with Kieślowski, he has collaborated with several other directors, winning a César in 1996 for his work on Jean Becker's Élisa. He has won a number of other awards, including another César in 1994 for Three Colors: Red, and the Silver Bear from the 47th Berlin International Film Festival 1997 for The Island on Bird Street.

George Washington (February 22, 1732 [O.S. February 11, 1731] – December 14, 1799) was the first President of the United States of America, serving from 1789 to 1797, and the dominant military and political leader of the United States from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of the Constitution in 1787. Washington became the first president, by unanimous choice, and oversaw the creation of a strong, well-financed national government that maintained neutrality in the wars raging in Europe, suppressed rebellion, and won acceptance among Americans of all types. His leadership style established many forms and rituals of government that have been used since, such as using a cabinet system and delivering an inaugural address. Washington is universally regarded as the "Father of his country."

Osip Antonovich Kozlovsky (also Joseph, Iosif Kozlowsky Russian: О́сип Анто́нович Козло́вский, also Иосиф or Юзеф Polish: Józef Kozłowski; (born 1757 Warsaw died March 11 [OS February 27] 1831), St Petersburg) was a Russian composer of Polish or Belarusian origin.

For the most part of his life Osip Kozlovsky was attached to the Russian Imperial Court, for which he wrote most of his music. In Russia he became popular especially for his patriotic polonaises.

Born in Warsaw, he was a choir boy at St. John Cathedral. From 1775 he worked in Trakai at the palace of Tadeusz Franciszek Ogiński as a teacher of Michał Kleofas Ogiński (1765–1833) the statesman, rebel, and composer, known for his polonaise Pożegnanie Ojczyzny / Razvitannie z Radzimaj (Farewell to the Homeland).

He moved to Russia in 1786, where he became involved in the war against Turkey. He entered the army as aide-de-camp to Prince Dolgoruky. Soon he became known to Prince Grigory Potemkin, the prime minister (and accredited lover of Catherine II) between 1774 to 1776. Impressed by the musical talent of Kozlovski, Potemkin introduced him to the Court.

William Wordsworth (7 April 1770 – 23 April 1850) was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads.

Wordsworth's magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as the poem "to Coleridge". Wordsworth was Britain's Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.

The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland—part of the scenic region in northwest England, the Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, was born the following year, and the two were baptised together. They had three other siblings: Richard, the eldest, who became a lawyer; John, born after Dorothy, who went to sea and died in 1805 when the ship of which he was Master, the Earl of Abergavenny, was wrecked off the south coast of England; and Christopher, the youngest, who entered the Church and rose to be Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Their father was a legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale and, through his connections, lived in a large mansion in the small town. Wordsworth, as with his siblings, had little involvement with their father, and they would be distant from him until his death in 1783.