100px|USS Chicago low in the water on the morning of 30 January 1943, from torpedo damage inflicted the night before

The Battle of Rennell Island took place on 29–30 January 1943, and was the last major naval engagement between the United States Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Guadalcanal campaign of World War II. The battle took place in the South Pacific between Rennell Island and Guadalcanal in the southern Solomon Islands. In the battle, Japanese naval land-based torpedo bombers, seeking to provide protection for the impending evacuation of Japanese forces from Guadalcanal, made several attacks over two days on United States' warships operating as a task force south of Guadalcanal. In addition to approaching Guadalcanal with the objective of engaging any Japanese ships that might come into range, the U.S. task force was protecting an Allied transport ship convoy that was carrying replacement troops to Guadalcanal. As a result of the Japanese air attacks on the task force, one U.S. heavy cruiser was sunk, a destroyer was heavily damaged, and the rest of the U.S. task force was forced to retreat from the southern Solomons area. Partly because of their success in turning back the U.S. task force in this battle, the Japanese were successful in evacuating their remaining troops from Guadalcanal by 7 February 1943, leaving Guadalcanal in the hands of the Allies and ending the battle for the island. (more...)

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

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1845:

American poet Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" appeared in the New York Evening Mirror, the first publication attributed to Poe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raven

1886:

German engine designer and engineer Karl Benz filed a patent for the Motorwagen, the first purpose-built, gasoline-driven automobile. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Benz

1944:

World War II: At least 38 people were killed and about a dozen injured when the Polish village of Koniuchy (present-day Kaniūkai, Lithuania) was attacked by Soviet partisan units. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koniuchy_massacre

1967:

The Mantra-Rock Dance, called the "ultimate high" of the hippie era, took place in San Francisco, featuring Swami Bhaktivedanta, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead, and Allen Ginsberg . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantra-Rock_Dance

2009:

The Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt ruled that people who did not adhere to one of the three government-recognised religions are also eligible to receive government identity documents. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_identification_card_controversy

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

expedite (v): 1. (transitive) To accelerate the progress of. 2. (transitive) To perform (a task) fast and efficiently http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/expedite

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy. --Thomas Paine http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Paine