Operation Obviate was an unsuccessful British air raid of World War II
that targeted the German battleship Tirpitz (pictured in 1943 or 1944).
Conducted by Royal Air Force heavy bombers during the early hours of 29
October 1944, it sought to destroy the damaged battleship after she
moved to a new anchorage near Tromsø in northern Norway. The attack
followed the previous month's successful Operation Paravane, during
which Tirpitz was crippled by British heavy bombers. In Operation
Obviate, 38 bombers and a film aircraft departed from bases in northern
Scotland. Obscured by clouds, the battleship was not directly hit, but
was damaged by a bomb that exploded near her hull. A British bomber made
a crash landing in Sweden after being hit by German anti-aircraft fire,
and several others were damaged. The plans for the attack were reused
for the next raid on the battleship, Operation Catechism, on 12
November, when Tirpitz was sunk with heavy loss of life.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Obviate>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1955:
An explosion, likely caused by a World War II–era mine,
capsized the Soviet ship Novorossiysk in the harbor of Sevastopol, with
the loss of 608 men.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_battleship_Giulio_Cesare>
1969:
A student at UCLA sent the first message on the ARPANET
(message log shown), the precursor to the Internet, to a computer at the
Stanford Research Institute.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET>
1999:
About 10,000 people died when a tropical cyclone made landfall
in the Indian state of Odisha near the city of Bhubaneswar.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Odisha_cyclone>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
signage:
1. (uncountable) Signs, particularly those imparting commercial,
directional, or road traffic information, taken collectively.
2. (countable, chiefly India, elsewhere regarded as nonstandard) A
sign, a signboard.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/signage>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the
study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer
interprets the truth.
--Jean Giraudoux
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean_Giraudoux>