August Meyszner (3 August 1886 – 24 January 1947) was an Austrian gendarmerie officer, right-wing politician, and senior Ordnungspolizei (order police) officer of Nazi Germany. He held the post of Higher SS and Police Leader in the German-occupied territory of Serbia from January 1942 to March 1944, during World War II. During his tenure, he oversaw regular reprisal killings and sent tens of thousands of forced labourers to Germany and occupied Norway. His Gestapo detachment also used a gas van to kill as many as 8,000 Jewish women and children who had been detained at the Sajmište concentration camp. Meyszner's time in Belgrade was characterised by friction and competition with German military, economic and foreign affairs officials, and by his visceral hatred and distrust of Serbs; he was considered one of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's most brutal subordinates. Extradited by the Allies to Yugoslavia after the war, he was found guilty of war crimes by a military court, and was executed by hanging on 24 January 1947.

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

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1458:

The 14-year-old Matthias Corvinus was unanimously proclaimed King of Hungary after the Estates were persuaded to do so by his uncle Michael Szilágyi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Corvinus

1848:

James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill (reconstruction pictured) in Coloma, California, leading to the California Gold Rush. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Gold_Rush

1915:

First World War: British Grand Fleet ships surprised a German High Seas Fleet squadron in the North Sea, forcing the latter to retreat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dogger_Bank_(1915)

1968:

Vietnam War: The 1st Australian Task Force launched Operation Coburg against the North Vietnamese army and Viet Cong during wider fighting around Long Binh and Biên Hòa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Coburg

1990:

Japan launched the Hiten spacecraft, the first lunar probe launched by a country other than the Soviet Union or the United States. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiten

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

swarf: 1. (uncountable) The waste chips or shavings from an abrasive activity, such as metalworking, a saw cutting wood, or the use of a grindstone or whetstone. 2. (countable) A particular waste chip or shaving. 3. (transitive) To grind down. […] 4. (intransitive, Scotland, obsolete) To grow languid; to faint. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/swarf

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.   --Ursula K. Le Guin https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ursula_K._Le_Guin