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>
Show replies by date