HMS Formidable was an Illustrious-class aircraft carrier ordered for the Royal Navy before World War II. Transferred to the Mediterranean Fleet as a replacement for the crippled sister ship Illustrious, Formidable's aircraft played a key role in the Battle of Cape Matapan in early 1941, then provided cover for Allied ships and attacked Axis forces until the carrier was badly damaged by German dive bombers in May. Assigned to the Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean in early 1942, the carrier covered the invasion of Diego Suarez in Vichy Madagascar in mid-1942 against the possibility of a sortie by the Japanese into the Indian Ocean. The ship participated in Operation Torch, the invasion of French North Africa, in November, and covered the invasions of Sicily and mainland Italy in 1943. Formidable made several attacks on the German battleship Tirpitz in Norway with the Home Fleet in mid-1944, and in 1945 attacked targets in the Japanese Home Islands. After repatriating liberated Allied prisoners of war and soldiers and ferrying British personnel across the globe, the ship was placed in reserve, and finally sold for scrap in 1953.
Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Formidable_(67)
_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
986:
Byzantine–Bulgarian Wars: The Bulgarians defeated the Byzantine forces at the Gate of Trajan near present-day Ihtiman, with Byzantine Emperor Basil II barely escaping. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Gates_of_Trajan
1560:
The Scottish Parliament adopted a Protestant confession of faith to initiate the Scottish Reformation and disestablishing Catholicism as the national religion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Reformation
1943:
Second World War: The Royal Air Force began a strategic bombing campaign against Nazi Germany's V-weapon programme by attacking the Peenemünde Army Research Center. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Hydra_(1943)
1980:
Two-month-old Australian Azaria Chamberlain was taken from her family's campsite at Uluru by a dingo, for which her mother was later convicted of murder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Azaria_Chamberlain
2008:
With the victory in the 4×100 m medley relay at the Beijing Summer Olympics, Michael Phelps set the records for the most gold medals won by an individual in a single Olympics (8) as well as total career gold medals (14) in modern Olympic history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Phelps
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
stevedore: A dockworker involved in loading and unloading cargo. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/stevedore
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
We now give more serious weight to the words of a country's poets than to the words of its politicians — though we know the latter may interfere more drastically with our lives. Religions, ideologies, mercantile competition divide us. The essential solidarity of the very diverse poets of the world, besides being mysterious fact is one we can be thankful for, since its terms are exclusively those of love, understanding and patience. It is one of the few spontaneous guarantees of possible unity that mankind can show, and the revival of an appetite for poetry is like a revival of an appetite for all man's saner possibilities, and a revulsion from the materialist cataclysms of recent years and the worse ones which the difference of nations threatens for the years ahead. --Ted Hughes https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ted_Hughes