SMS Schlesien was one of five Deutschland-class pre-dreadnought battleships that served in the German Imperial Navy. Named after the province of Silesia in 1906 and commissioned in 1908, Schlesien was primarily occupied with training cruises and fleet maneuvers in her early career. She served with the High Seas Fleet throughout the first two years of World War I, saw brief action at the Battle of Jutland, and became a training ship in 1917. The Treaty of Versailles permitted the German navy to keep eight obsolete battleships, including Schlesien, to defend the German coast. Modernized in the mid-1920s, the ship saw limited combat during World War II, briefly bombarding Polish forces during the invasion of Poland in September 1939. After escorting minesweepers during the invasion of Norway and Denmark in April 1940, she primarily served as a training ship and icebreaker. She was sunk by a mine in 1945 while tasked with providing fire support off the Baltic coast of occupied Poland.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Schlesien

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1899:

Philippine–American War: For the only time during the course of the war, Philippine President Emilio Aguinaldo personally led troops against the U.S. in the Battle of Marilao River. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marilao_River

1981:

The Solidarity movement in Poland staged a warning strike, the biggest strike in the history of the Eastern Bloc, in which at least 12 million Poles walked off their jobs for four hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_warning_strike_in_Poland

1999:

During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, an Army of Yugoslavia unit shot down a U.S. Air Force F-117 stealth aircraft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shootdown

2009:

A failure of the dam holding Situ Gintung, an artificial lake in Tangerang District, Indonesia, resulted in floods killing at least 100 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situ_Gintung

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

wagon: 1. A four-wheeled cart for hauling loads. 2. A four-wheeled child's riding toy, pulled or steered by a long handle attached to the front. 3. An enclosed vehicle for carrying goods or people; (by extension) a lorry, a truck. 4. An enclosed vehicle used as a movable dwelling; a caravan. 5. Short for dinner wagon (“set of light shelves mounted on castors so that it can be pushed around a dining room and used for serving”). 6. (slang) Short for paddy wagon (“police van for transporting prisoners”). 7. (rail transport) A freight car on a railway. 8. (chiefly Australia, US, slang) Short for station wagon (“type of car in which the roof extends rearward to produce an enclosed area in the position of and serving the function of the boot (trunk)”); (by extension) a sport utility vehicle (SUV); any car. 9. (Ireland, slang, derogatory, dated) A woman of loose morals, a promiscuous woman, a slapper; (by extension) a woman regarded as obnoxious; a bitch, a cow. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wagon

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

In our contemporary social and intellectual plight, it is nothing less than shocking to discover that those persons who claim to have discovered an absolute are usually the same people who also pretend to be superior to the rest. To find people in our day attempting to pass off to the world and recommending to others some nostrum of the absolute which they claim to have discovered is merely a sign of the loss of and the need for intellectual and moral certainty, felt by broad sections of the population who are unable to look life in the face.   --Karl Mannheim https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Mannheim