Courbet was the lead ship of her class of four dreadnought battleships,
the first ones built for the French Navy. In World War I, after helping
to sink the Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser SMS Zenta in August
1914, she provided cover for the Otranto Barrage that blockaded the
Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea, and often served as a
flagship. Although upgraded several times before World War II, by the
1930s she was no longer considered to be a first-line battleship and
spent much of that decade as a gunnery training ship. A few weeks after
the German invasion of France on 10 May 1940, Courbet was hastily
reactivated. She supported Allied troops in the defence of Cherbourg
during mid-June. As part of Operation Catapult, she was seized in
Portsmouth by British forces on 3 July and was turned over to the Free
French a week later. She was used as a stationary anti-aircraft battery
and as an accommodation ship there.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_battleship_Courbet_%281911%29>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1862:
Slavery in Washington, D.C., ended when the District of
Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act became law.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_Compensated_Emancipation_Act>
1919:
Polish–Soviet War: The Polish army launched the Vilna
offensive to capture Vilnius (now in Lithuania) from the Red Army.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilna_offensive>
1947:
American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch
first described the post–World War II tensions between the Soviet
Union and the United States as a "cold war".
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War>
2014:
The South Korean ferry MV Sewol sank 1.5 km (0.93 mi)
offshore of Donggeochado, Jindo County, with around 300 of the 476
onboard killed.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
boiling frog:
(idiomatic, often attributively) A person who, or thing which, is in a
gradually worsening situation without any realization of the peril until
it is too late.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boiling_frog>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a majestic
and sublime edifice. But, beautiful as it has been preserved in growing
old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the
numberless degradations and mutilations which time and men have both
caused the venerable monument to suffer, without respect for
Charlemagne, who laid its first stone, or for Philip Augustus, who laid
the last. On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the side
of a wrinkle, one always finds a scar. Tempus edax, homo edacior; which
I should be glad to translate thus: time is blind, man is stupid.
--The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hunchback_of_Notre-Dame>