HMS Indefatigable was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy and the lead
ship of her class. Her keel was laid down in 1909 and she was
commissioned on 24 February 1911. When the First World War began, the
ship was serving with the 2nd Battlecruiser Squadron (BCS) in the
Mediterranean, where she unsuccessfully pursued the battlecruiser
Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau of the German Imperial Navy as
they fled towards the Ottoman Empire. The ship bombarded Ottoman
fortifications defending the Dardanelles on 3 November 1914, then,
following a refit in Malta, returned to the United Kingdom.
Indefatigable was sunk on 31 May 1916 during the Battle of Jutland, the
largest naval battle of the war. Part of Vice-Admiral Sir David
Beatty's Battlecruiser Fleet, she was hit several times in the first
minutes of the "Run to the South", the opening phase of the
battlecruiser action. Shells from the German battlecruiser Von der Tann
caused an explosion ripping a hole in her hull, and a second explosion
hurled large pieces of the ship 200 feet (61 m) in the air. Only three
of the crew of 1,017 survived.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Indefatigable_%281909%29>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1607:
Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, considered the first
fully developed opera, was first performed in Mantua (now in modern
Italy).
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Orfeo>
1822:
The first Swaminarayan temple, Swaminarayan Mandir in present-day
Ahmedabad, India, was inaugurated.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shri_Swaminarayan_Mandir%2C_Ahmedabad>
1826:
The Treaty of Yandabo was signed, ending the First Anglo-Burmese War,
the longest and most expensive war in the history of the British Raj.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Yandabo>
1944:
World War II: The United States Army long-range penetration special
operations unit known as Merrill's Marauders began a 1000-mile
(1600 km) march over the Patkai region of the Himalayas and into the
Burmese jungle behind Japanese lines.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill%27s_Marauders>
2006:
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared a state of
emergency in an attempt to subdue a possible military coup.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_state_of_emergency_in_the_Philippines>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
dystrophy (n):
A wasting of body tissues, of genetic origin or due to inadequate or
defective nutrition
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dystrophy>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns
home to find it.
--George A. Moore
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_A._Moore>