SMS Goeben was the second of two Moltke-class battlecruisers of the Imperial German Navy, launched in 1911 and named after the German Franco-Prussian War veteran General August Karl von Goeben. Compared to their British rivals in the Indefatigable class, Goeben and her sister ship were significantly larger and better armored. After her commissioning, Goeben, with the light cruiser Breslau, patrolled the Mediterranean during the Balkan Wars. After the outbreak of World War I on 28 July 1914, Goeben and Breslau evaded British naval forces and reached Constantinople. The two ships were transferred to the Ottoman Empire on 16 August 1914, and Goeben became the flagship of the Ottoman Navy as Yavuz Sultan Selim. By bombarding Russian facilities in the Black Sea, she brought Turkey into World War I on the German side. In later service, she carried the remains of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk from Istanbul to İzmit in 1938. She was decommissioned in 1950 and scrapped in 1973, after the West German government declined to buy her back. She was the last surviving ship built by the Imperial German Navy, and the longest-serving battlecruiser or dreadnought-type ship in any navy.

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

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1821:

Peruvian War of Independence: Argentine general José de San Martín declared the independence of Peru from Spain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_de_San_Mart%C3%ADn

1866:

At the age of 18, Vinnie Ream became the first and youngest female artist to receive a commission from the United States government for a statue—that of Abraham Lincoln in the U.S. Capitol rotunda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinnie_Ream

1914:

Austria-Hungary declared war after rejecting Serbia's conditional acceptance of only part of the July Ultimatum following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, starting World War I. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I

1976:

An earthquake measuring at least 8.2 on the Richter scale, one of the deadliest in history, flattened Tangshan, China, killing at least 240,000 people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Tangshan_earthquake

1996:

The remains of the prehistoric Kennewick Man were discovered on a bank of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington, US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennewick_Man

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

doula: A support person, usually female, who may not have medical or midwifery training, who provides emotional assistance to a mother or pregnant couple before, during or after childbirth. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/doula

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

 A rationalist is simply someone for whom it is more important to learn than to be proved right; someone who is willing to learn from others — not by simply taking over another's opinions, but by gladly allowing others to criticize his ideas and by gladly criticizing the ideas of others. The emphasis here is on the idea of criticism or, to be more precise, critical discussion. The genuine rationalist does not think that he or anyone else is in possession of the truth; nor does he think that mere criticism as such helps us achieve new ideas. But he does think that, in the sphere of ideas, only critical discussion can help us sort the wheat from the chaff. He is well aware that acceptance or rejection of an idea is never a purely rational matter; but he thinks that only critical discussion can give us the maturity to see an idea from more and more sides and to make a correct judgement of it.   --Karl Popper https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karl_Popper