SMS Moltke was the lead ship of the Moltke-class battlecruisers of the German Imperial Navy, named after the 19th century German field marshal Helmuth von Moltke. Commissioned on 30 September 1911, the ship was the second battlecruiser built for the Imperial Navy. Moltke, along with her sister ship Goeben, was an enlarged version of the previous German battlecruiser design, Von der Tann. The ship was very similar to Von der Tann, but had increased armor protection and two more main guns in an additional gun turret. Compared to her British rivals—the Indefatigable class—Moltke and her sister Goeben were significantly larger and better armored. The ship participated in most of the major fleet actions conducted by the German Navy during the First World War, including the Battles of Dogger Bank and Jutland in the North Sea, and the Battle of the Gulf of Riga and Operation Albion in the Baltic. Moltke was damaged several times during the war: the ship was hit by heavy caliber gunfire at Jutland, and torpedoed twice by British submarines while on fleet advances. Following the end of the war in 1918, Moltke, along with most of the High Seas Fleet, was interned at Scapa Flow pending a decision by the Allies as to the fate of the fleet. The ship met her end when she was scuttled, along with the rest of the High Seas Fleet, in 1919 to prevent them from falling into British hands.

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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

529:

Byzantine Emperor Justinian I issued the first draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis, a first attempt to codify Roman law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_Juris_Civilis

1348:

King Charles of Bohemia issued a Golden Bull to establish Charles University in Prague, the first university in Central Europe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_University_in_Prague

1805:

German composer Ludwig van Beethoven premiered his Third Symphony, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._3_%28Beethoven%29

1868:

D'Arcy McGee, a Canadian Father of Confederation, was assassinated; to date, the only Canadian political assassination at the federal level. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Arcy_McGee

1945:

World War II: American forces sunk the Japanese battleship Yamato, the largest battleship in the world, during Operation Ten-Go. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ten-Go

1948:

The United Nations established the World Health Organization to act as a coordinating authority on international public health. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

infelicitous (adj): 1. Unhappy or unfortunate. 2. Inappropriate or awkward; not well said, expressed, or done http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/infelicitous

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Great minds are to make others great. Their superiority is to be used, not to break the multitude to intellectual vassalage, not to establish over them a spiritual tyranny, but to rouse them from lethargy, and to aid them to judge for themselves. --William Ellery Channing http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Ellery_Channing