Ryūjō ("Prancing Dragon") was a light aircraft carrier built for the
Imperial Japanese Navy during the early 1930s. Small and lightly built
in an attempt to exploit a loophole in the Washington Naval Treaty of
1922, she proved to be top-heavy and only marginally stable, and was
back in the shipyard for modifications within a year of completion. With
her stability improved, Ryūjō returned to service and was employed in
operations during the Second Sino-Japanese War. During World War II,
she provided air support for operations in the Philippines, Malaya, and
the Dutch East Indies, where her aircraft participated in the Second
Battle of the Java Sea. During the Indian Ocean raid in April 1942, the
carrier attacked British merchant shipping with both her guns and her
aircraft. Ryūjō participated in the Battle of the Aleutian Islands in
June. She was sunk by American carrier aircraft at the Battle of the
Eastern Solomons on 24 August 1942.
Read more:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Ry%C5%ABj%C5%8D>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
216 BC:
Second Punic War: Outnumbered Carthaginian forces led by
Hannibal defeated a Roman army, near the town of Cannae, Apulia, in
southeast Italy.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cannae>
1916:
An explosion, blamed on Austro-Hungarian saboteurs, sank the
Italian dreadnought Leonardo da Vinci.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_battleship_Leonardo_da_Vinci>
1939:
Leo Szilard wrote a letter, signed by Albert Einstein and
addressed to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning that Germany may
develop atomic bombs, leading to the U.S. establishing the Manhattan
Project.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_letter>
1989:
Sri Lankan Civil War: The Indian Peace Keeping Force began a
massacre that led to the deaths of 64 minority Sri Lankan Tamil
civilians over a two-day period in Valvettithurai, Sri Lanka.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Valvettiturai_massacre>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
hello girl:
(telephony, informal, dated) A female telephone operator.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hello_girl>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
They are not long, the days of wine and roses; Out of a misty
dream Our path emerges for a while, then closes Within a dream.
--Ernest Dowson
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ernest_Dowson>