1709

• English wit and lexicographer Samuel Johnson.
• Elizaveta Petrovna, daughter of Peter the Great, future empress of Russia.
• French naturalist Julien Offray de La Mettrie.
• Bohemian composer Franz Xavier Richter.
• English novelist John Cleland.
• Italian painter Giuseppe Zais.
• Dutch painter Meindert Hobbema.
• English poet John Armstrong.
• English composer William Flackton.
• English actress Hannah Pritchard.
• French composer Michel Corrette.
• English politician and poet, Lord George Lyttelton.
• German naturalist and explorer (with Vitus Bering) Georg Wilhelm Steller.

• Italian composer Giuseppe Torelli.
• French art historian Roger de Piles.
• Italian painter Giovanni Battista Gaulli, aka "Il Baciccio".
• Italian painter Andrea Pozzo.
• 10,000 French and 20,000 British and Hanoverian troops at the Battle of Malplaquet, the bloodiest battle of the 18th century.
• 1,000 Swedes and about 1,300 Russians at the Battle of Poltava.
• Japanese emperor Higashiyama. Naka-no-Mikado (two years old) succeeds him
• Tokugawa Tsunayoshi, shogun of Japan.  He is succeeded by Tokugawa Ienobu.
• Cossack hetman Ivan Stepanovich Mazepa, in Bendery, probably from wounds suffered at Poltava.

• Bartolommeo Cristofori invents the "gravicembalo col piano e forte".
• Alexander Selkirk is rescued from Juan Fernandez Island.
• The Great Northern War:
• (January) Charles XII has his army lay siege to Veprik.  The city surrenders.
• (April) The Swedish army, 29,000 men commanded by Charles XII, low on rations, tries several times to besiege the town of Poltava, (now in the Ukraine). Meanwhile a Russian army (led by Tsar Peter) of 45,000 surrounds them.
• (June 27), Charles decides to break out of the encirclement. In the ensuing battle, the Swedish army is crushed
• (July 8) Most of the Swedish army surrenders.  Enlisted men are sent to mines in  the Urals, Officers are sent to Siberia, few return.  Charles, wounded during the battle, escapes with 1,000 men into Bessarabia (then in The Ottoman Empire, now Moldova), setting up shop in Bendery.
• At any rate, Sweden's days as a world power are over.
• The Swedish army in Poland retreats into Pomerania.
• Denmark enters the war, and invades southern Sweden.
• A Saxon army enters Poland and removes Charles' puppet, Stanislaus Leszczynski, giving Saxon Elector Augustus II his throne back.
• The War of the Spanish Succession/Queen Anne's War:
• (September) Marlborough captures Tournai (now in Belgium).
• (Septermber 11) Dutch, Austrian, and British forces under Duke of Marlborough win the day against the French at Battle of Malplaquet, but casualties are so heavy that they cannot advance on Paris.  Not only that, popular support for the war in Britain evaporates.  This is really a strategic victory for the French.
• The Afghan Ghilzai tribe revolts against their Persian overlords. The revolt, centered in Kandahar, will eventually destroy the Persian Safavid dynasty.

1708 - 1709 - 1710

How they Were Made - 18th Century