August Meyszner (3 August 1886 – 24 January 1947) was an Austrian
gendarmerie officer, right-wing politician, and senior Ordnungspolizei
(order police) officer of Nazi Germany. He held the post of Higher SS
and Police Leader in the German-occupied territory of Serbia from
January 1942 to March 1944, during World War II. During his tenure, he
oversaw regular reprisal killings and sent tens of thousands of forced
labourers to Germany and occupied Norway. His Gestapo detachment also
used a gas van to kill as many as 8,000 Jewish women and children who
had been detained at the Sajmište concentration camp. Meyszner's time
in Belgrade was characterised by friction and competition with German
military, economic and foreign affairs officials, and by his visceral
hatred and distrust of Serbs; he was considered one of Reichsführer-SS
Heinrich Himmler's most brutal subordinates. Extradited by the Allies to
Yugoslavia after the war, he was found guilty of war crimes by a
military court, and was executed by hanging on 24 January 1947.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Meyszner>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1458:
The 14-year-old Matthias Corvinus was unanimously proclaimed
King of Hungary after the Estates were persuaded to do so by his uncle
Michael Szilágyi.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Corvinus>
1848:
James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill
(reconstruction pictured) in Coloma, California, leading to the
California Gold Rush.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush>
1915:
First World War: British Grand Fleet ships surprised a German
High Seas Fleet squadron in the North Sea, forcing the latter to
retreat.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dogger_Bank_(1915)>
1968:
Vietnam War: The 1st Australian Task Force launched Operation
Coburg against the North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong during wider
fighting around Long Binh and Biên Hòa.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Coburg>
1990:
Japan launched the Hiten spacecraft, the first lunar probe
launched by a country other than the Soviet Union or the United States.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiten>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
swarf:
1. (uncountable) The waste chips or shavings from an abrasive activity,
such as metalworking, a saw cutting wood, or the use of a grindstone or
whetstone.
2. (countable) A particular waste chip or shaving.
3. (transitive) To grind down. […]
4. (intransitive, Scotland, obsolete) To grow languid; to faint.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/swarf>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of
light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in
kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.
--Ursula K. Le Guin
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin>