The Razing of Friesoythe took place on 14 April 1945 towards the end of World War II. The 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division, advancing into north-west Germany, attacked the German-held town of Friesoythe. The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada captured the town. During the fighting the battalion's commander was killed by a German soldier, but it was reported that he had been killed by a civilian. The division's commander, Major-General Christopher Vokes, ordered that the town be razed in retaliation, and it was substantially destroyed. Twenty German civilians died in Friesoythe during the fighting. The rubble of the town was used to fill craters in local roads to make them passable for the division's tanks and heavy vehicles. Little official notice was taken of the incident and the Canadian Army official history glosses over it. Forty years later, Vokes wrote in his autobiography that he had "no great remorse over the elimination of Friesoythe".
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razing_of_Friesoythe
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
966:
Mieszko I, ruler of the Polans, converted to Christianity, an event considered to be the founding of the Polish state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_during_the_Piast_dynasty
1935:
Dust Bowl: A severe dust storm swept across Oklahoma and northern Texas, removing an estimated 300 million tons of topsoil from the prairies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sunday_%28storm%29
2010:
Nearly 2,700 people were killed in an earthquake registering 6.9 Mw in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Yushu_earthquake
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
enfeoff: 1. (transitive, chiefly law, historical) To transfer a fief to, to endow with a fief; to put (a person) in legal possession of a freehold interest. 2. (transitive, figuratively) To give up completely; to surrender, to yield. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/enfeoff
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
I shall not ever return to you, my pigs, because, at worst, to die valorously is better than to sleep out one's youth in the sun. A man has but one life. It is his all. Therefore I now depart from you, my pigs, to win me a fine wife and much wealth and leisure wherein to discharge my geas. And when my geas is lifted I shall not come back to you, my pigs, but I shall travel everywhither, and into the last limits of earth, so that I may see the ends of this world and may judge them while my life endures. For after that, they say, I judge not, but am judged: and a man whose life has gone out of him, my pigs, is not even good bacon. --James Branch Cabell https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Branch_Cabell