The Battle of Prokhorovka (12 July 1943), one of the largest tank
battles in history, was fought between Waffen-SS units of Nazi Germany
and Red Army units of the Soviet Union during the Second World War on
the Eastern Front. The climax of the German offensive Operation Citadel,
it resulted when the Soviet 5th Guards Tank Army intercepted the II SS-
Panzer Corps of the German Wehrmacht near Prokhorovka. The Soviet forces
were decimated in the attack, but succeeded in preventing the Wehrmacht
from capturing Prokhorovka and breaking through the last heavily
fortified defensive belt. With the Germans unable to accomplish their
objective for Operation Citadel, they cancelled it and began redeploying
their forces to deal with new pressing developments elsewhere. The
failure of the operation marked the first time in the war that a major
German offensive was halted before it could break through enemy
defences. The Soviet Union permanently gained the strategic initiative,
and Germany permanently lost the capacity to launch offensives of this
scale on the Eastern Front.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Prokhorovka>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1561:
Saint Basil's Cathedral, located at the geographic center of
Moscow, was consecrated.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Basil%27s_Cathedral>
1801:
French Revolutionary Wars: A squadron of British Royal Navy
ships of the line defeated a larger squadron of ships from the Spanish
Navy and French Navy in the Gut of Gibraltar.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Algeciras>
1917:
Vigilantes forcibly deported about 1,300 striking mine workers,
their supporters, and bystanders from Bisbee, Arizona, U.S., to New
Mexico.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisbee_Deportation>
1963:
In Gorton, England, 16-year-old Pauline Reade disappeared, the
first victim of serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moors_murders>
2007:
Two U.S. Army AH-64 Apache helicopters conducted a series of
air-to-ground attacks in Baghdad; classified cockpit gunsight footage
was released to the Internet in 2010.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_12,_2007_Baghdad_airstrike>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
haptic:
1. Of or relating to the sense of touch; tactile.
2. (computing) Of or relating to haptics (“the study of user interfaces
that use the sense of touch”).
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/haptic>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Politicians are always realistically maneuvering for the next
election. They are obsolete as fundamental problem-solvers.
--Buckminster Fuller
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller>