In the Swedish calendar it was a common year starting on Friday, one day ahead of the Julian and ten days behind the Gregorian calendar. Events January–March January 1 – Battle of St. John's: The French capture St. John's, the capital of the British colony of Newfoundland. January 6 – Western Europe's Great Frost of 1709, the coldest period in 500 years, begins during the night, lasting three months, with its effects felt for the entire year. In France, the Atlantic coast and Seine River freeze, crops fail, and 24,000 Parisians die. Floating ice enters the North Sea. January 10 – Abraham Darby I successfully produces cast iron using coke fuel at his Coalbrookdale blast furnace in Shropshire, England. February 1 or 2 – During his first voyage, Captain Woodes Rogers encounters marooned privateer Alexander Selkirk, and rescues him after four years living on one of the Juan Fernández Islands, inspiring Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe. After sacking Guayaquil, he and Selkirk will visit the Galápagos Islands. February 19 – Tokugawa Ienobu becomes the sixth shōgun of the Tokugawa dynasty of Japan, after the death of the shōgun Tsunayoshi, who had been head of government since 1680. February – In America, Mardi Gras is celebrated one more time with Masque de la Mobile in the capital of French Louisiana, Mobile, Alabama, before Mobile is moved 27 miles (43 km) down the Mobile River to Mobile Bay in 1711. March 28 – Johann Friedrich Böttger reports the first production of hard-paste porcelain in Europe, at Dresden. April–June April 13 – The Raudot Ordinance of 1709 becomes law in the French colony of New France, legalizing slavery. April 21 – Mirwais Hotak takes control of Kandahar (in Afghanistan) by murdering the Persian governor, Gurgin Khan, known also as George XI. May 6 – The first influx into Britain of poor refugee families of German Palatines from the Rhenish Palatinate arrives in England. Most of them are Protestants en route to the New World colonies. June 17 – Trịnh Cương becomes the new king of northern Vietnam (Đàng Ngoài) upon the death of his grandfather, Trịnh Căn, and begins a 20-year reign until his death on December 20, 1729 June 26 – The Battle of Fort Albany, an attack by 100 French colonial volunteers and Cree natives on the British Hudson's Bay Company outpost at Fort Albany on Hudson Bay. John Fullartine, commander