The Attack on Sydney Harbour was raid during World War II by submarines of
the Imperial Japanese Navy on the cities of Sydney and Newcastle in New
South Wales, Australia. On the night of 31 May–1 June, three Ko-hyoteki
class midget submarines, each with a two-member crew, entered Sydney Harbour
to sink Allied warships. After being detected and attacked, the crews of two
of the midget submarines scuttled their boats and committed suicide without
engaging Allied vessels. The third attempted to torpedo the heavy cruiser
USS Chicago but instead sank the converted ferry HMAS Kuttabul, killing 21
sailors. This midget submarine then disappeared, its fate remaining a
mystery until 2006, when amateur scuba divers discovered the wreck off
Sydney's northern beaches. Immediately following the raid the five Japanese
fleet submarines that carried the midgets to Australia embarked on a
campaign to disrupt merchant shipping in eastern Australian waters. The
midget submarine attacks are among the best-known examples of Axis naval
activity in Australian waters during World War II. The main impact was
psychological and popular fear of an impending invasion forced the
Australian military to upgrade defences.
Read the rest of this article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Sydney_Harbour
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1795:
French Revolution: Under the terms of a new constitution that was ratified
during the aftermath of the Reign of Terror and the subsequent Thermidorian
Reaction, the Directory succeeded the National Convention as the executive
government of France.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Directory)
1917:
British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration,
proclaiming British support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in
Palestine.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration_of_1917)
1936:
BBC Television Service launched the world's first regular, public
all-electronic television service with a high level of image resolution
which became known as high-definition television.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_One)
1947:
American industrialist and aviator Howard Hughes flew Spruce Goose, the
largest flying boat ever built, on its maiden flight from the coast of Long
Beach, California, USA.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hughes_H-4_Hercules)
2000:
Expedition 1: American astronaut William Shepherd and Russian cosmonauts
Sergei Krikalev and Yuri Gidzenko became the first resident crew to arrive
at the International Space Station.
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station)
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
tmesis: (n) (prosody) The insertion of one or more words between the
components of a compound word.
(
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tmesis)
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could
go straight upwards.
--Fred Hoyle
(
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle)