130px|HMS Lion

HMS Lion was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy, the lead ship of her class. Lion served as the flagship of the Grand Fleet's battlecruisers throughout World War I, except when she was being refitted or under repair. She sank the German light cruiser Köln during the Battle of Heligoland Bight and served as Vice Admiral Beatty's flagship at the battles of Dogger Bank and Jutland. She was so badly damaged at the first of these battles that she had to be towed back to port by the battlecruiser Indomitable and was under repair for more than two months. During the Battle of Jutland she suffered a serious propellant fire that could have destroyed the ship if not for the bravery of Royal Marine Major Francis Harvey, who posthumously received the Victoria Cross for having ordered the magazine flooded. She spent the rest of the war on uneventful patrols in the North Sea. She was put into reserve in 1920 and sold for scrap in 1924 under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty. (more...)

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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1538:

Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada founded a European urban settlement in what is today Bogotá, Colombia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogot%C3%A1

1806:

The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved by its last emperor Francis II during the aftermath of the War of the Third Coalition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_II%2C_Holy_Roman_Emperor

1945:

World War II: The U.S. Army Air Force bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb named Little Boy on Hiroshima, Japan, killing as many as 140,000 people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enola_Gay

1964:

American researcher Donald Currey had a bristlecone pine tree known as Prometheus cut down, only to find that it was the oldest known non-clonal organism ever discovered, at least 4,862 years old at the time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_%28tree%29

1996:

NASA announced that the meteorite known as ALH 84001 , discovered in the Allan Hills of Antarctica, may contain evidence of life on Mars. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Hills_84001

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

coffle (n): A line of people or animals fastened together, especially a chain of slaves or prisoners http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coffle

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something new:

That which they have done but earnest of the things that they shall do:

For I dipped into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew

From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue;

Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm,

With the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunderstorm;

Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled

In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe,

And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapped in universal law. --Alfred Tennyson http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alfred_Tennyson