The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal took place November 12 – November 15, 1942, and was the decisive battle in a series of naval battles that took place between Allied (primarily U.S.) and Japanese forces during the months-long Guadalcanal campaign in the Solomon Islands. The battle consisted of a sequence of combined air and sea engagements spread over four days, most of them in the vicinity of Guadalcanal. All of the engagements were directly related to a single effort by the Japanese to reinforce their land forces on Guadalcanal, and are all therefore considered to be different parts of the same battle. In two extremely destructive nighttime surface warship engagements, both adversaries lost numerous ships. Also, U.S. daytime air attacks over several days sank or damaged several Japanese warships and transport ships. The sum of these engagements was that the U.S. was successful in turning back Japan's last major attempt to dislodge Allied forces from their positions on Guadalcanal and nearby Tulagi. Thus, the battle resulted in a significant strategic victory for the U.S. and its allies.
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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1028: Future Byzantine empress Zoe married Romanus Argyrus according to the wishes of the dying Constantine VIII. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoe_%28empress%29)
1893: Mortimer Durand, Foreign Secretary of British India, and Abdur Rahman Khan, Amir of Afghanistan, signed the Durand Line Agreement, establishing what is now the international border between Afghanistan and modern-day Pakistan. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durand_Line)
1927: Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky)
1936: The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, connecting San Francisco and Oakland, California across San Francisco Bay, opened to traffic. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco-Oakland_Bay_Bridge)
1970: The Oregon Highway Division attempted to destroy a rotting beached sperm whale near Florence, Oregon with explosives, leading to the exploding whale incident. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/exploding_whale)
_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:
taciturn: Silent; temperamentally untalkative; disinclined to speak. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/taciturn)