HMS Princess Royal was built for the British Royal Navy before the First World War in response to the Moltke-class battlecruisers of the Imperial German Navy and significantly improved on the speed, armament, and armour of earlier battlecruisers. Laid down in 1912 and commissioned in 1913, Princess Royal served in the Battle of Heligoland Bight a month after the war began. During the Battle of Dogger Bank, Princess Royal scored few hits, although one crippled the German armoured cruiser Blücher. Shortly afterward, she became the flagship of the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron, under the command of Rear-Admiral Osmond Brock. Princess Royal was moderately damaged during the Battle of Jutland and required a month and a half of repairs. Apart from providing distant support during the Second Battle of Heligoland Bight in 1917, the ship spent the rest of the war on uneventful patrols of the North Sea. She was sold for breaking up as scrap in 1922. (This article is part of a featured topic: Battlecruisers of the world.). Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_topics/Battlecruisers_of_the_world> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1638: Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for her participation in the Antinomian Controversy. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Hutchinson> 1765: The Parliament of Great Britain passed the Stamp Act, requiring that many printed materials in the Thirteen Colonies in British America carry a tax stamp. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_Act_1765> 1871: William Woods Holden, Governor of North Carolina, became the first U.S. state governor to be removed from office through impeachment. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Woods_Holden> 2004: Palestinian imam Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a founder and the spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed by an Israeli missile as he left early morning prayers. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Yassin> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: potable: 1. (formal) Good for drinking without fear of disease or poisoning. 2. Any drinkable liquid; a beverage. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/potable> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:   Up to a point a man’s life is shaped by environment, heredity, and movements and changes in the world about him; then there comes a time when it lies within his grasp to shape the clay of his life into the sort of thing he wishes to be. Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate. Everyone has it within his power to say, this I am today, that I shall be tomorrow. The wish, however, must be implemented by deeds.   --Louis L'Amour <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_L%27Amour>