USS West Bridge (ID-2888) was a cargo ship during World War I, one of
the steel-hulled West ships built for the U.S. Shipping Board on the
West Coast. Launched in April 1918, the ship joined a convoy of cargo
ships headed to France in August. After the convoy was attacked by two
German submarines and West Bridge was torpedoed, a salvage crew from the
American destroyer Smith and four tugs dispatched from France
successfully brought the ship into port. After seven months of repairs,
West Bridge resumed Navy service until December 1919. The ship was laid
up for nearly seven years from 1922 to 1929, when she was sold to an
intercoastal cargo service under the name SS Barbara Cates. By 1938, the
ship had been renamed Pan Gulf for service with a subsidiary of the
Waterman Steamship Company. During World War II, Pan Gulf made nine
round trips across the North Atlantic without incident in convoys. In
May 1945, the ship was transferred to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease.
Renamed SS Lermontov, the ship continued in civilian service for the
Soviets until 1966.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_West_Bridge_(ID-2888)>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1843:
Captain Lord George Paulet of the Royal Navy began a five-month
occupation of land in the Hawaiian Islands.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulet_affair_(1843)>
1866:
Miners in Calaveras County, California, discovered a human
skull that a prominent geologist claimed was proof (later disproven)
that humans had existed during the Pliocene age.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calaveras_Skull>
1948:
Fearful of civil war and Soviet intervention in recent unrest,
Czechoslovakian president Edvard Beneš ceded control over the
government to the Communist Party.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Czechoslovak_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat>
1951:
After being postponed since 1943 due to World War II, the
first Pan American Games opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_American_Games>
1992:
Nagorno-Karabakh War: Armenian armed forces killed at least 161
ethnic Azerbaijani civilians from the town of Khojaly in the Nagorno-
Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khojaly_Massacre>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
Nadsat:
The Russian-influenced argot used by the teenage protagonists in Anthony
Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange (1962).
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Nadsat>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
I had no ambition when I was a kid other than to play guitar and
get in a rock 'n' roll band. I don't really like to be the guy in the
white suit at the front. Like in the Beatles, I was the one who kept
quiet at the back and let the other egos be at the front.
--George Harrison
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Harrison>