Peresvet was the lead ship of the three pre-dreadnought battleships of
the Peresvet class built for the Imperial Russian Navy at the end of the
nineteenth century. The ship was transferred to the Pacific Squadron
upon completion and based at Port Arthur from 1903. During the Russo-
Japanese War of 1904–05, she participated in the Battle of Port Arthur
and was seriously damaged during the Battle of the Yellow Sea and again
in the Siege of Port Arthur. The ship was scuttled before the Russians
surrendered, then salvaged by the Japanese and placed into service with
the name Sagami. Partially rearmed, Sagami was reclassified by the
Imperial Japanese Navy as a coastal defence ship in 1912. In 1916, the
Japanese sold her to the Russians, their allies since the beginning of
World War I. En route to the White Sea in early 1917, she sank off Port
Said, Egypt, after striking mines laid by a German submarine.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_battleship_Peresvet>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1776:
American Revolutionary War: A Continental Army garrison west of
Montreal surrendered to British troops at the Battle of the Cedars.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Cedars>
1845:
Captain John Franklin (engraving shown) departed Greenhithe,
England, on an expedition to the Canadian Arctic; all 129 men were later
lost when their ships became icebound in Victoria Strait.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin%27s_lost_expedition>
2015:
A corroded oil pipeline near Refugio State Beach, California,
spilled 142,800 U.S. gallons (3,400 barrels) of crude oil onto one of
the most biologically diverse coastlines of the U.S. West Coast.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugio_oil_spill>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
gnomon:
1. An object such as a pillar or a rod that is used to tell time by the
shadow it casts when the sun shines on it, especially the pointer on a
sundial.
2. An object such as a pillar used by an observer to calculate the
meridian altitude of the sun (that is, the altitude of the sun when it
reaches the observer's meridian), for the purpose of determining the
observer's latitude.
3. The index of the hour circle of a globe.
4. (geometry) A plane figure formed by removing a parallelogram from a
corner of a larger parallelogram.
5. (mathematics, by extension) A number representing the increment
between two figurate numbers (“numbers equal to the numbers of dots in
geometric figures formed of dots”).
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gnomon>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school
graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new
ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only
see what it is prepared to see.
--Edward de Bono
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edward_de_Bono>
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