Courbet was the lead ship of her class of four dreadnought battleships, the first ones built for the French Navy. In World War I, after helping to sink the Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser SMS Zenta in August 1914, she provided cover for the Otranto Barrage that blockaded the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea, and often served as a flagship. Although upgraded several times before World War II, by the 1930s she was no longer considered to be a first-line battleship and spent much of that decade as a gunnery training ship. A few weeks after the German invasion of France on 10 May 1940, Courbet was hastily reactivated. She supported Allied troops in the defence of Cherbourg during mid-June. As part of Operation Catapult, she was seized in Portsmouth by British forces on 3 July and was turned over to the Free French a week later. She was used as a stationary anti-aircraft battery and as an accommodation ship there.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_battleship_Courbet_%281911%29

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1862:

Slavery in Washington, D.C., ended when the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act became law. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_Compensated_Emancipation_Act

1919:

Polish–Soviet War: The Polish army launched the Vilna offensive to capture Vilnius (now in Lithuania) from the Red Army. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilna_offensive

1947:

American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch first described the post–World War II tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States as a "cold war". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War

2014:

The South Korean ferry MV Sewol sank 1.5 km (0.93 mi) offshore of Donggeochado, Jindo County, with around 300 of the 476 onboard killed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_MV_Sewol

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

boiling frog: (idiomatic, often attributively) A person who, or thing which, is in a gradually worsening situation without any realization of the peril until it is too late. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/boiling_frog

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The church of Notre-Dame de Paris is still no doubt, a majestic and sublime edifice. But, beautiful as it has been preserved in growing old, it is difficult not to sigh, not to wax indignant, before the numberless degradations and mutilations which time and men have both caused the venerable monument to suffer, without respect for Charlemagne, who laid its first stone, or for Philip Augustus, who laid the last. On the face of this aged queen of our cathedrals, by the side of a wrinkle, one always finds a scar. Tempus edax, homo edacior; which I should be glad to translate thus: time is blind, man is stupid.   --The Hunchback of Notre-Dame https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hunchback_of_Notre-Dame