Hiyō (Flying Hawk) was the name ship of her class of two aircraft carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Begun as the ocean liner Izumo Maru in 1939, she was purchased by the Navy Ministry in 1941 for conversion to an aircraft carrier. Completed shortly after the Battle of Midway in June 1942, she participated in the Guadalcanal campaign, but missed the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October because of an electrical generator fire. The carrier's aircraft were disembarked several times and used from land bases in battles in the South West Pacific. Hiyō was torpedoed in mid-1943 and spent three months under repair. She spent most of the next six months training and ferrying aircraft before returning to combat. She was sunk by a gasoline-vapour explosion caused by an American torpedo hit during the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 20 June 1944 with the loss of 247 officers and ratings, about a fifth of her complement. (This article is part of a featured topic: Hiyō class aircraft carrier.).
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_topics/Hiy%C5%8D_class_aircraft_carrier
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1921:
British Army officer Thomas Stanton Lambert was assassinated by the Irish Republican Army near Moydrum, Ireland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Stanton_Lambert
1959:
The extratropical remnants of an Atlantic hurricane reached the Gulf of St. Lawrence in Canada, causing 22 fishing boats to capsize and killing 35 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1959_Escuminac_disaster
1979:
Bill Stewart, an American journalist, was executed by Nicaraguan Guardia forces. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Stewart_%28journalist%29
1982:
The International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide, the first major conference in genocide studies, opened despite Turkish attempts to cancel it due to the inclusion of presentations on the Armenian genocide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Conference_on_the_Holocaust_and_Genocide
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
take French leave: 1. To leave quietly and unnoticed, without asking for permission or informing anyone; to slip out. 2. (specifically, chiefly military, euphemistic) To desert or be temporarily absent from duty or service without permission; to go absent without leave or AWOL. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/take_French_leave
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
June with her glancing grasses, June with a smiling sky,June, brown as the country lasses Or wings of the dragon-fly!The mown hay lies like sedges Or weed of the seashore strewn;Abrim with corn to the hedges The fields are filled in June. --Walter Headlam https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Walter_Headlam