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The Rheinmetall 120 mm gun is a smoothbore tank gun designed and produced by the German Rheinmetall-DeTec AG company. It was developed in response to Soviet advances in armor technology and development of new armored threats. With production beginning in 1974, the first version of the gun, known as the L/44, was used on the German Leopard 2, and was soon license produced to be used on tanks such as the American M1A1 Abrams tanks. The American version, the M256, is simplified, however, by using a coilspring recoil system instead of a hydraulic system. It has also been exported to South Korea and Japan, as well as nations which have procured the Leopard 2 and the M1 Abrams. Rheinmetall's 120-millimeter (4.7 in) L/44 tank gun has a length of 5.28 meters (5.77 yd), while the gun system weighs approximately 3,317 kilograms (7,310 lb). However, by 1990 the L/44 was not considered powerful enough to deal with modernized Soviet armor, such as the T-80B, which stimulated an effort by Rheinmetall to develop a better main armament. This first revolved around a 140-millimeter (5.5 in) tank gun, but later turned into a compromise which led to the development of an advanced 120-millimeter (4.7 in) gun. (more...)

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August 5: Independence Day in Burkina Faso (1960); Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving Day and the Day of Croatian defenders in Croatia

• 1100 – Henry I was crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey.
• 1388 – Scottish forces defeated the English during a border skirmish near Otterburn, Northumberland.
• 1583 – Explorer Humphrey Gilbert established the first English colony in North America at what is now St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
• 1772 – Russia, Prussia and Habsburg Austria began the First Partition of Poland to help restore the regional balance of power in Eastern Europe among those three countries.
• 1858 – American businessman and financier Cyrus West Field and his colleagues completed the first transatlantic telegraph cable, crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Valentia Island in Ireland to Heart's Content in Newfoundland, Canada.
• 1962 – Actress and model Marilyn Monroe (pictured) was found dead in her home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, an event that has become the center of one of the most debated conspiracy theories.
• 2003 – A suicide bomber detonated a car bomb outside the lobby of the JW Marriott Hotel in Setiabudi, South Jakarta, Indonesia, killing twelve people and injuring 150.

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