SMS Helgoland was a dreadnought battleship of the Imperial German Navy. Her design improved from the Nassau class, including an increase in the bore diameter of the main guns. Her keel was laid down at the Howaldtswerke shipyards in Kiel; she was launched on 25 September 1909, and commissioned on 23 August 1911. During World War I the ship participated in several sweeps into the North Sea as the covering force for the battlecruisers of the I Scouting Group. She saw limited duty in the Baltic Sea against the Russian Navy, including serving as part of a support force during the Battle of the Gulf of Riga in August 1915. Helgoland was present at the Battle of Jutland from 31 May to 1 June 1916, though she was located in the center of the German line of battle and not as heavily engaged as the ships in the lead. She was ceded to Great Britain after the war and broken up for scrap in the early 1920s. Her coat of arms is preserved in the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_Helgoland_%281909%29

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1790:

Peking opera was born with the introduction of Hui opera to Beijing by the "Four Great Anhui Troupes" in honour of the Qianlong Emperor's 80th birthday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peking_opera

1890:

Sequoia National Park was established to conserve giant sequoia trees in an area affected by logging in the southern Sierra Nevada in California. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_National_Park

1983:

In one of the largest prison escapes in British history, 38 Provisional Irish Republican Army prisoners hijacked a meals lorry and broke out of HM Prison Maze in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_Prison_escape

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

lapsus oculi: (formal, rare) An error that results from looking in the wrong place, especially one that occurs while copying or translating a body of text. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lapsus_oculi

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion, against injustice and lying and greed. If you, not just you in this room tonight, but in all the thousands of other rooms like this one about the world today and tomorrow and next week, will do this … as individuals, men and women, you will change the earth; in one generation all the Napoleons and Hitlers and Caesars and Mussolinis and Stalins and all the other tyrants who want power and aggrandizement, and the simple politicians and time-servers who themselves are merely baffled or ignorant or afraid, who have used, or are using, or hope to use, man’s fear and greed for man’s enslavement, will have vanished from the face of it.   --William Faulkner https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Faulkner