A battleship is a large, heavily-armored warship with a main battery consisting of the largest caliber of guns. They are larger, better-armed and better-armored than cruisers. The word battleship was coined around 1794 and is a shortened form of line of battle ship, the dominant warship in the Age of Sail. In 1906, HMS Dreadnought heralded a revolution in battleship design, and for many years modern battleships were referred to as dreadnoughts. The global arms race in battleship construction in the early 1900s was a significant factor in the origins of World War I, which saw a clash of huge battlefleets at the Battle of Jutland. The construction of battleships was limited by the Naval Treaties of the 1920s and 1930s, but battleships both old and new were deployed during World War II. Despite this record, some historians and naval theorists question the value of the battleship. Aside from Jutland, there were few great battleship clashes. And despite their great firepower and protection, battleships remained vulnerable to much smaller, cheaper ordnance and craft: initially the torpedo and mine, and later aircraft and the guided missile. The growing range of engagement led to the battleship's replacement as the leading type of warship by the aircraft carrier during World War II, being retained into the Cold War only by the United States Navy for fire support purposes. These last battleships were removed from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register in March 2006.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1773: The first recorded ministry of education, the Commission of National Education, was formed in Poland. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komisja_Edukacji_Narodowej)

1806: Battle of Jena-Auerstedt: French forces under Napoleon secure a decisive victory over the Prussians, effectively eliminating Prussia from the War of the Fourth Coalition after only nineteen days of fighting. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jena-Auerstedt)

1926: The first book featuring English author A. A. Milne's fictional bear Winnie-the-Pooh was first published. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie-the-Pooh)

1947: lying at an altitude of 45,000 ft (13.7 km) in an experimental Bell X-1 rocket-powered aircraft, American test pilot Chuck Yeager became the first person to break the sound barrier. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sound_barrier)

1981: Hosni Mubarak was elected President of Egypt, one week after Anwar Sadat was assassinated. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosni_Mubarak)

_____________________ Wiktionary's Word of the day:

homograph: A word that is spelled the same as another, but has a different meaning and usually a different etymology. (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/homograph)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

There's an old African proverb that says "If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." We have to go far — quickly. And that means we have to quickly find a way to change the world's consciousness about exactly what we're facing, and why we have to work to solve it. -- Al Gore (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Al_Gore)