SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm ("His Majesty's Ship Elector Friedrich
Wilhelm") was one of the first ocean-going battleships of the Imperial
German Navy, the fourth pre-dreadnought of the Brandenburg class. She
was laid down in 1890 in the Imperial Dockyard in Wilhelmshaven,
launched in 1891, and completed in 1893 at a cost of 11.23 million
Marks. She served as the flagship of the Imperial fleet from her
commissioning until 1900, seeing limited active duty during the
relatively peaceful late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her career
focused on training exercises and goodwill visits to foreign ports. She
saw only one major overseas deployment, to China in 1900 and 1901,
during the Boxer Rebellion. The ship underwent a major modernization in
1904 and 1905. In 1910, Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm was sold to the
Ottoman Empire and renamed Barbaros Hayreddin. She saw heavy service
during the Balkan Wars, primarily providing artillery support to ground
forces in Thrace. In a state of severe disrepair, the old battleship was
partially disarmed after the Ottoman Empire joined World War I's Central
Powers. On 8 August 1915 the ship was torpedoed and sunk off the
Dardanelles with heavy loss of life.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Kurf%C3%BCrst_Friedrich_Wilhelm>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1576:
The cornerstone of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe's observatory
Uraniborg was laid on the island of Hven.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uraniborg>
1918:
The Battle of Amiens began in Amiens, France, marking the start
of the Allied Powers' Hundred Days Offensive through the German front
lines that ultimately led to the end of World War I.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Amiens_(1918)>
1969:
At a zebra crossing in London, photographer Iain Macmillan took
the photo that was used for the cover of the Beatles album Abbey Road,
one of the most famous album covers in recording history.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbey_Road>
1988:
A series of marches, demonstrations, protests, and riots, which
became known as the 8888 Uprising, began against the one-party state of
the Burma Socialist Programme Party.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8888_Uprising>
2010:
A massive mudslide of 1.8 million cubic metres
(2,400,000 cu yd) of mud and rocks in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous
Prefecture, China, killed 1,471 people.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Gansu_mudslide>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
levant:
To abscond or run away, especially to avoid paying money or debts..
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/levant>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Our technical civilization has just reached its greatest level
of savagery. We will have to choose, in the more or less near future,
between collective suicide and the intelligent use of our scientific
conquests. … Let us be understood. If the Japanese surrender after the
destruction of Hiroshima, having been intimidated, we will rejoice. But
we refuse to see anything in such grave news other than the need to
argue more energetically in favor of a true international society, in
which the great powers will not have superior rights over small and
middle-sized nations, where such an ultimate weapon will be controlled
by human intelligence rather than by the appetites and doctrines of
various states. Before the terrifying prospects now available to
humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only goal worth
struggling for. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by
all peoples to their governments — a demand to choose definitively
between hell and reason.
--Albert Camus
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Camus>