The Razing of Friesoythe took place on 14 April 1945 towards the end
of World War II. The 4th Canadian (Armoured) Division, advancing into
north-west Germany, attacked the German-held town of Friesoythe. The
Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada captured the town. During
the fighting the battalion's commander was killed by a German soldier,
but it was reported that he had been killed by a civilian. The
division's commander, Major-General Christopher Vokes, ordered that the
town be razed in retaliation, and it was substantially destroyed. Twenty
German civilians died in Friesoythe during the fighting. The rubble of
the town was used to fill craters in local roads to make them passable
for the division's tanks and heavy vehicles. Little official notice was
taken of the incident and the Canadian Army official history glosses
over it. Forty years later, Vokes wrote in his autobiography that he had
"no great remorse over the elimination of Friesoythe".
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razing_of_Friesoythe>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
966:
Mieszko I, ruler of the Polans, converted to Christianity, an
event considered to be the founding of the Polish state.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_during_the_Piast_dynasty>
1935:
Dust Bowl: A severe dust storm swept across Oklahoma and
northern Texas, removing an estimated 300 million tons of topsoil from
the prairies.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sunday_%28storm%29>
2010:
Nearly 2,700 people were killed in an earthquake registering
6.9 Mw in Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, China.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Yushu_earthquake>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
enfeoff:
1. (transitive, chiefly law, historical) To transfer a fief to, to endow
with a fief; to put (a person) in legal possession of a freehold
interest.
2. (transitive, figuratively) To give up completely; to surrender, to
yield.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/enfeoff>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
I shall not ever return to you, my pigs, because, at worst, to
die valorously is better than to sleep out one's youth in the sun. A man
has but one life. It is his all. Therefore I now depart from you, my
pigs, to win me a fine wife and much wealth and leisure wherein to
discharge my geas. And when my geas is lifted I shall not come back to
you, my pigs, but I shall travel everywhither, and into the last limits
of earth, so that I may see the ends of this world and may judge them
while my life endures. For after that, they say, I judge not, but am
judged: and a man whose life has gone out of him, my pigs, is not even
good bacon.
--James Branch Cabell
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Branch_Cabell>
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