Wikipedia:Main Page history/2012 April 28

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SMS König at sea

SMS König was the first of four König class dreadnought battleships of the German Imperial Navy during World War I. König (Eng: "King") was named in honor of Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. Laid down in October 1911, the ship was launched on 1 March 1913. Construction on König finished shortly after the outbreak of World War I; she was commissioned into the High Seas Fleet on 9 August 1914. Along with her three sister ships, Grosser Kurfürst, Markgraf, and Kronprinz, König took part in most of the fleet actions during the war. As the leading ship in the German line on 31 May 1916 in the Battle of Jutland, König was heavily engaged by several British battleships and suffered ten large-caliber shell hits. In October 1917, she forced the Russian pre-dreadnought battleship Slava to scuttle itself during Operation Albion. König was interned, along with the majority of the High Seas Fleet, in Scapa Flow in November 1918 following the Armistice. On 21 June 1919, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter gave the order to scuttle the fleet while the British guard ships were out of the harbor on exercises. König slipped beneath the waters of Scapa Flow at 14:00. Unlike most of the other scuttled ships, König was never raised for scrapping; the wreck is still sitting on the bottom of the bay. (more...)

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  • In the news

    Sloterdijk collision aftermath

  • Former Liberian President Charles Taylor is found guilty of aiding and abetting war crimes during the Sierra Leone Civil War.
  • Two trains collide in Amsterdam, killing one person and severely injuring dozens more (aftermath pictured).
  • Bhoja Air Flight 213 crashes on its final approach in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing all 127 people on board.
  • India successfully test launches the Agni-V intercontinental ballistic missile.
  • American broadcaster, television producer and music promoter Dick Clark dies at the age of 82.
  • Jim Yong Kim is elected President of the World Bank.
  • Amid a dispute with Repsol and the government of Spain, Argentina announces re-nationalisation of the oil company YPF.
  • On this day...

    April 28: International Workers' Memorial Day

    William Bligh

  • 1611 – The University of Santo Tomas in Manila, one of the oldest existing universities in Asia and one of the world's largest Catholic universities in terms of enrollment, was founded.
  • 1789 – About 1,300 miles west of Tahiti, near Tonga, Fletcher Christian, the master's mate on board the Royal Navy ship HMAV Bounty, led a mutiny against the ship's commander William Bligh (pictured).
  • 1910 – Frenchman Louis Paulhan won the London to Manchester air race, the first long-distance aeroplane race in England.
  • 1944World War II: During Exercise Tiger, a full-scale rehearsal for the invasion of Normandy, German S-boats attacked an Allied convoy, killing 946 American servicemen.
  • 2008 – The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, at the time the world's highest residence above ground-level at 1,389 feet (423 m), held its full service grand opening.
  • More anniversaries: April 27 April 28 April 29

    It is now April 28, 2012 (UTC) – Refresh this page

    Today's featured picture

    The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger

    The Ambassadors (1533) is a painting by Hans Holbein the Younger in the National Gallery, London. As well as being a double portrait, the painting contains a still life of several meticulously rendered objects, the meaning of which is the cause of much debate. The most notable and famous of Holbein's symbols in the work is the skewed skull, rendered in anamorphic perspective, which is placed in the painting's bottom centre. It is meant to be a visual puzzle as the viewer must approach the painting nearly from the side to see the form morph into an accurate rendering of a human skull.

    Image: Google Art Project

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