[Wikipedia] October 14: Battleship

[Faraaz Damji]

   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


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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)


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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)


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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)