is first spotted from the Swedish coast, starting the Russian Pillage of 1719–21 as part of the Great Northern War. July 16 – The Carlsten fortress in Sweden surrenders to a Danish and Norwegian force after a siege of seven days. Colonel Henrich Danckwardt, who surrendered the fortress to Peter Tordenskjold after being away from it while it was still defensible, is beheaded on September 16. August 13 – In the Battle of Stäket, Crown Prince Frederick I of Sweden leads the successful defense of Stockholm from Russian Admiral Fyodor Apraksin's Baltic Fleet during the Russian Pillage. August 19 – Siege of San Sebastian. The Spanish garrison surrenders to the Duke of Berwick. August 20 – Princess Maria Josepha of Austria, at one time the heir presumptive to the throne of Austria's Habsburg Empire, marries Frederick Augustus, Elector of Saxony ten days after renouncing any claim to the Austrian throne. September 3 – The three-story tall Opernhaus am Zwinger, one of the largest opera houses in the world at the time, opens in Dresden by staging Antonio Lotti's Giovi in Argo. September 29 – Muhammad Shah is crowned as the 12th Mughal Emperor of India at Shahjahanabad (now Delhi), 12 days after the death of Shah Jahan II from tuberculosis. October–December October 11 – Fernando Manuel de Bustillo Bustamante y Rueda, the Spanish Governor-General of the Philippines, is assassinated in a bloody coup d'etat by supporters of the Archbishop of Manila, whom Bustamante had imprisoned. October 14 – The British Army, under the command of Major General George Wade, invades and captures the forts of Vigo on the Atlantic coast of Spain. October 21 – The Red Canal is opened in the Russian capital, Saint Petersburg, after seven years of construction, at a ceremony in the presence of the Tsar Peter the Great. October 28 – Sweden and Denmark sign an armistice, halting combat in the Great Northern War between them, with final terms agreed to in the Treaty of Frederiksborg on July 3, 1720. November 9 – In a treaty between Sweden and Hanover at the close of the Great Northern War, Sweden cedes the Duchies of Bremen and Verden (in northern Germany) to Hanover. December 22 – Andrew Bradford publishes the American Weekly Mercury, Pennsylvania's first newspaper. Date unknown Prussia conducts Europe's first systematic census. Miners in Falun, Sweden find the apparently petrified body of Fet-Mats Israelsson (d.