Today's featured article
SM U-66 was the lead ship of the Type U-66 U-boats (submarines) for the German Imperial Navy during World War I. The submarine had been laid down in November 1913 by Germaniawerft of Kiel for the Austro-Hungarian Navy, who then sold the entire class to the German Imperial Navy after the outbreak of war appeared to make delivery to the Adriatic impossible. Redesigned and reconstructed to German specifications, U-66 was launched in April 1915 and commissioned in July. The boat was 228 feet (69 m) long and was armed with five torpedo tubes and a deck gun. As a part of the Baltic and 4th Flotillas, U-66 sank 24 ships with a combined gross register tonnage of 69,967 in six war patrols. After reporting her position in the North Sea on 3 September 1917, neither the U-boat nor any of her 40-man crew were ever heard from again. A postwar German study offered no explanation for her loss, although British records suggest that she may have struck a mine in the Dogger Bank area. (Full article...)
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In the news
- At the Boston Marathon, Ethiopian Lelisa Desisa (pictured) wins the men's race and Kenyan Caroline Rotich wins the women's race.
- More than 1,100 people are feared dead after multiple ships carrying migrants capsize off Libya in separate incidents.
- Nokia agrees to buy telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent for €15.6 billion (US$16.6 billion).
- Stone tools found at Lomekwi 3 are dated to 3.3 million years ago, which, if confirmed, would represent the oldest known stone tools.
- Günter Grass, Nobel laureate and author of The Tin Drum and Dog Years, dies at the age of 87.
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Recent deaths: Surya Bahadur Thapa – Percy Sledge – Eduardo Galeano