100px|USS Chicago low in the water on the morning of 30 January 1943,
from torpedo damage inflicted the night before
The Battle of Rennell Island took place on 29–30 January 1943, and
was the last major naval engagement between the United States Navy and
the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Guadalcanal campaign of World
War II. The battle took place in the South Pacific between Rennell
Island and Guadalcanal in the southern Solomon Islands. In the battle,
Japanese naval land-based torpedo bombers, seeking to provide
protection for the impending evacuation of Japanese forces from
Guadalcanal, made several attacks over two days on United States'
warships operating as a task force south of Guadalcanal. In addition to
approaching Guadalcanal with the objective of engaging any Japanese
ships that might come into range, the U.S. task force was protecting an
Allied transport ship convoy that was carrying replacement troops to
Guadalcanal. As a result of the Japanese air attacks on the task force,
one U.S. heavy cruiser was sunk, a destroyer was heavily damaged, and
the rest of the U.S. task force was forced to retreat from the southern
Solomons area. Partly because of their success in turning back the U.S.
task force in this battle, the Japanese were successful in evacuating
their remaining troops from Guadalcanal by 7 February 1943, leaving
Guadalcanal in the hands of the Allies and ending the battle for the
island. (more...)
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Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Rennell_Island>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1845:
American poet Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" appeared in the New York
Evening Mirror, the first publication attributed to Poe.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raven>
1886:
German engine designer and engineer Karl Benz filed a patent for the
Motorwagen, the first purpose-built, gasoline-driven automobile.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Benz>
1944:
World War II: At least 38 people were killed and about a dozen injured
when the Polish village of Koniuchy (present-day Kaniūkai, Lithuania)
was attacked by Soviet partisan units.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koniuchy_massacre>
1967:
The Mantra-Rock Dance, called the "ultimate high" of the hippie era,
took place in San Francisco, featuring Swami Bhaktivedanta, Janis
Joplin, Grateful Dead, and Allen Ginsberg .
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantra-Rock_Dance>
2009:
The Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt ruled that people who did not
adhere to one of the three government-recognised religions are also
eligible to receive government identity documents.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_identification_card_controversy>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
expedite (v):
1. (transitive) To accelerate the progress of.
2. (transitive) To perform (a task) fast and efficiently
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/expedite>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change
his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any
principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once.
Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final
establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to
be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom
conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is
to instruct, not to destroy.
--Thomas Paine
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine>