The USS Constellation captured the French L'Insurgente in a single-ship action between the frigates on 9 February 1799. The previous year, French privateering attacks against American vessels had led to the undeclared Quasi-War. Four US naval squadrons were sent to the Caribbean with orders to seize armed French vessels and prevent attacks on American ships. The squadron under Commodore Thomas Truxtun was on assignment in the waters between Puerto Rico and Saint Kitts when his flagship Constellation, cruising independently, met and engaged L'Insurgente, commanded by Michel-Pierre Barreaut. After chasing the French ship through a storm, Truxtun forced an engagement. The French frigate surrendered after 74 minutes with heavy casualties; the Americans sustained only a few casualties. L'Insurgente was taken to Saint Kitts and commissioned into the United States Navy as USS Insurgent. The action was the first victory over an enemy warship for the newly formed navy, and Truxtun was praised by the American government and public.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constellation_vs_L%27Insurgente
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1825:
After no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes, the United States House of Representatives elected John Quincy Adams president. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Quincy_Adams
1913:
A group of meteors was visible across much of the eastern seaboard of North and South America, leading astronomers to conclude that the source had been a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1913_Great_Meteor_Procession
1943:
World War II: Allied forces declared Guadalcanal secure, ending the Guadalcanal Campaign as a significant strategic victory for Allied forces fighting Japan in the Pacific War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalcanal_Campaign
1969:
The Boeing 747 made its first flight, with test pilots Jack Waddell and Brien Wygle at the controls and Jess Wallick at the flight engineer's station. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747
1996:
Breaking a seventeen-month ceasefire, the Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a powerful truck bomb in Canary Wharf, London, killing 2 people and injuring more than 100 others. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_Docklands_bombing
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
grand fromage: (humorous) A big cheese; an important person. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grand_fromage
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures, in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete bestiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and to himself. A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. It sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn’t it? And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked on a word and made a mountain out of a pea — he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure, and thus he reaches the point of real hostility… --Fyodor Dostoevsky https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fyodor_Dostoevsky