HMS Endeavour was the Royal Navy research vessel commanded by Lieutenant James Cook on his first voyage of discovery to Australia and New Zealand from 1769 to 1771. She was launched in 1764 as the collier Earl of Pembroke, and purchased by the Navy in 1768 for a scientific mission to the Pacific Ocean and to explore for the surmised Terra Australis Incognita. Her voyage took her to Tahiti for the 1769 transit of Venus, then south into the largely uncharted South Pacific. In September 1769 she reached New Zealand, the first European vessel to visit in 127 years. Seven months later Endeavour became the first ship to reach the east coast of Australia, making landfall in Botany Bay on 29 April 1770. Her return voyage marred by shipwreck and the deaths of one third of her crew, Endeavour reached the port of Dover in July 1771 after nearly three years at sea. In 1776 she returned to naval service for the American Revolutionary War but was scuttled in a blockade of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. The wreck has not been precisely located, but relics including cannons and an anchor are displayed in maritime museums worldwide. The Space Shuttle Endeavour was named in her honour in 1989.

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

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1587:

Anglo-Spanish War: In the Bay of Cádiz, Francis Drake led the first of several naval raids on the Spanish Armada that destroyed so many ships that Philip II of Spain had to delay his plans to invade England for over a year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singeing_the_King_of_Spain%27s_Beard

1862:

American Civil War: Union forces under David Farragut captured New Orleans, securing access into the Mississippi River. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_New_Orleans

1944:

Second World War: British agent Nancy Wake parachuted into the Auvergne, becoming a liaison between the Special Operations Executive and the local maquis group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Wake

1997:

The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention went into effect, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons in those countries that ratified the arms control agreement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_Weapons_Convention

2011:

A worldwide television audience of 300 million people watched the wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey in London. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedding_of_Prince_William_and_Catherine_Middleton

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

anapest: 1. (US, prosody) A metrical foot consisting of three syllables, two short and one long (e.g the word "velveteen"). 2. (US, prosody) A fragment, phrase or line of poetry or verse using this meter; e.g. “Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot, but the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did NOT!” (Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas.). https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anapest

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful to do so. He studies it because he takes pleasure in it, and he takes pleasure in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful it would not be worth knowing, and life would not be worth living. I am not speaking, of course, of the beauty which strikes the senses, of the beauty of qualities and appearances. I am far from despising this, but it has nothing to do with science. What I mean is that more intimate beauty which comes from the harmonious order of its parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.   --Henri Poincaré https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henri_Poincar%C3%A9