HMS Eagle was an early aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy. Ordered by
Chile as the Almirante Latorre-class battleship Almirante Cochrane, she
was laid down on 20 February 1913. In early 1918 she was purchased by
Britain for conversion to an aircraft carrier. The ship was initially
assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet and then later to the China Station.
Eagle spent the first nine months of World War II in the Indian Ocean
searching for German commerce raiders. She was equipped solely with
Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers until late 1940. She was transferred to
the Mediterranean in May 1940, where she escorted multiple convoys to
Malta and Greece and attacked Italian shipping, naval units and bases in
the Eastern Mediterranean. Whenever Eagle was not at sea, her aircraft
were disembarked and used ashore. The ship was relieved by a more modern
carrier in March 1941 and ordered to hunt for Axis shipping in the
Indian Ocean and the South Atlantic. After completing a major refit in
early 1942, the ship made multiple trips delivering fighter aircraft to
Malta to boost its air defences. Eagle was torpedoed and sunk by the
German submarine U-73 in August 1942 while escorting a convoy to Malta.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Eagle_(1918)>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1816:
Italian composer Gioachino Rossini's opera buffa The Barber of
Seville was hissed by the audience during its debut at the Teatro
Argentina in Rome.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barber_of_Seville>
1872:
New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art (pictured), today
containing a collection of over two million works of art, opened.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art>
1943:
The Saturday Evening Post published the first of Norman
Rockwell's Four Freedoms, some of the most widely distributed paintings
ever produced, in support of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's "Four
Freedoms".
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms_(Norman_Rockwell)>
1959:
The Canadian government under Prime Minister John Diefenbaker
cancelled the Avro CF-105 Arrow interceptor aircraft program amid much
political debate.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow>
1988:
The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast voted to secede from
Azerbaijan and join Armenia, triggering the Nagorno-Karabakh War.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagorno-Karabakh_War>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
take a flyer:
(idiomatic) To make a choice with an uncertain outcome; to take a
chance.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/take_a_flyer>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
I don’t believe in the “supernatural,” I believe in the
“supernormal.” To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If
it seems incomprehensible, it’s because we haven’t been able to
understand it yet.
--Richard Matheson
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Matheson>