German Kriegsmarine. Named after Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the
primary force behind German unification in 1871, the ship was launched
on 14 February 1939 and commissioned in August 1940. Bismarck and her
sister ship Tirpitz were the largest battleships ever built by Germany,
and two of the largest built by any European power. Bismarck conducted
only one offensive operation, in May 1941. The ship, along with the
heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, was to raid Allied shipping from North
America to Great Britain. The two ships were detected several times off
Scandinavia, and British naval units were deployed to block them. At the
Battle of the Denmark Strait, Bismarck destroyed the battlecruiser
HMS Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, and forced the battleship
HMS Prince of Wales to retreat. After two days of relentless pursuit by
the Royal Navy, she was attacked by torpedo bombers from the aircraft
carrier HMS Ark Royal and her steering gear was rendered inoperable. In
her final battle the following morning, Bismarck was neutralised by a
sustained bombardment, was scuttled by her crew, and sank with heavy
loss of life.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1876:
Inventor Alexander Graham Bell and electrical engineer Elisha
Gray each filed a patent for the telephone, starting a controversy about
who invented it first.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisha_Gray_and_Alexander_Bell_telephone_controversy>
1924:
The Computing Tabulating Recording Company renamed itself to
International Business Machines, one of the world's largest companies by
market capitalization.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM>
1961:
Lawrencium, the metallic radioactive synthetic element with
atomic number 103, was first made at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory
on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrencium>
1989:
A fatwa was issued for the execution of Salman Rushdie for
authoring The Satanic Verses, a novel Islamic fundamentalists considered
blasphemous.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_controversy>
2005:
Former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri was assassinated
when explosives were detonated as his motorcade drove past the St.
George Hotel in Beirut, sparking the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Revolution>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
elope:
(intransitive, of an unmarried person) To run away secretly for the
purpose of getting married with one's intended spouse; to marry in a
quick or private fashion, especially without a public period of
engagement.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/elope>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
 Love all God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of
sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals,
love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will
perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you
will begin to comprehend it better every day, and you will come at last
to love the world with an all-embracing love.
--Fyodor Dostoevsky
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Fyodor_Dostoevsky>
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