The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal took place November 12 – November 15,
1942, and was the decisive battle in a series of naval battles that
took place between Allied (primarily U.S.) and Japanese forces during
the months-long Guadalcanal campaign in the Solomon Islands. The
battle consisted of a sequence of combined air and sea engagements
spread over four days, most of them in the vicinity of Guadalcanal.
All of the engagements were directly related to a single effort by the
Japanese to reinforce their land forces on Guadalcanal, and are all
therefore considered to be different parts of the same battle. In two
extremely destructive nighttime surface warship engagements, both
adversaries lost numerous ships. Also, U.S. daytime air attacks over
several days sank or damaged several Japanese warships and transport
ships. The sum of these engagements was that the U.S. was successful
in turning back Japan's last major attempt to dislodge Allied forces
from their positions on Guadalcanal and nearby Tulagi. Thus, the
battle resulted in a significant strategic victory for the U.S. and
its allies.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Battle_of_Guadalcanal
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1028:
Future Byzantine empress Zoe married Romanus Argyrus according to
the wishes of the dying Constantine VIII.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoe_%28empress%29)
1893:
Mortimer Durand, Foreign Secretary of British India, and Abdur
Rahman Khan, Amir of Afghanistan, signed the Durand Line Agreement,
establishing what is now the international border between Afghanistan
and modern-day Pakistan.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durand_Line)
1927:
Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party, leaving Joseph
Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky)
1936:
The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, connecting San Francisco and
Oakland, California across San Francisco Bay, opened to traffic.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco-Oakland_Bay_Bridge)
1970:
The Oregon Highway Division attempted to destroy a rotting beached
sperm whale near Florence, Oregon with explosives, leading to the
exploding whale incident.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/exploding_whale)
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Wiktionary's Word of the day:
taciturn: Silent; temperamentally untalkative; disinclined to speak.
(
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/taciturn)