Bismarck was the first of two Bismarck-class battleships built for the German Kriegsmarine. Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the primary force behind German unification in 1871, the ship was launched on 14 February 1939 and commissioned in August 1940. Bismarck and her sister ship Tirpitz were the largest battleships ever built by Germany, and two of the largest built by any European power. Bismarck conducted only one offensive operation, in May 1941. The ship, along with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, was to raid Allied shipping from North America to Great Britain. The two ships were detected several times off Scandinavia, and British naval units were deployed to block them. At the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Bismarck destroyed the battlecruiser HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, and forced the battleship HMS Prince of Wales to retreat. After two days of relentless pursuit by the Royal Navy, she was attacked by torpedo bombers from the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and her steering gear was rendered inoperable. In her final battle the following morning, Bismarck was neutralised by a sustained bombardment, was scuttled by her crew, and sank with heavy loss of life.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1876:
Inventor Alexander Graham Bell and electrical engineer Elisha Gray each filed a patent for the telephone, starting a controversy about who invented it first. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell_telephone_controversy
1924:
The Computing Tabulating Recording Company renamed itself to International Business Machines, one of the world's largest companies by market capitalization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM
1961:
Lawrencium, the metallic radioactive synthetic element with atomic number 103, was first made at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrencium
1989:
A fatwa was issued for the execution of Salman Rushdie for authoring The Satanic Verses, a novel Islamic fundamentalists considered blasphemous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_controversy
2005:
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri was assassinated when explosives were detonated as his motorcade drove past the St. George Hotel in Beirut, sparking the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Revolution
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
elope: (intransitive, of an unmarried person) To run away secretly for the purpose of getting married with one's intended spouse; to marry in a quick or private fashion, especially without a public period of engagement. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/elope
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
 Love all God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day, and you will come at last to love the world with an all-embracing love. --Fyodor Dostoevsky https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fyodor_Dostoevsky