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SMS Friedrich Carl was an armored cruiser of the Imperial German Navy. A member of the Prinz Adalbert class, the ship was intended to act as a scout for the fleet's battleships and to patrol the German colonial empire. The Prinz Adalbert class was based on the earlier armored cruiser Prinz Heinrich, but with improved armament and armor. Built in the early 1900s, Friedrich Carl served in the German fleet from 1904 to 1909, which included a period as flagship of the reconnaissance squadron and a cruise to the Mediterranean Sea. The ship was then used as a torpedo test vessel from 1909 until the start of World War I in July 1914. Friedrich Carl was assigned to the Cruiser Division of the Baltic Sea, serving as its flagship. On 17 November 1914, the ship struck a Russian naval mine off Memel and sank, though only seven or eight men were killed in the sinking. (This article is part of a featured topic: Armored cruisers of Germany.)

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Did you know ...

Campaign poster for the 1917 Łódź City Council election

... that socialists received 31 percent of the vote in the 1917 Łódź City Council election (campaign poster pictured), but the system implemented by the German occupying authorities only gave them 8 percent of the seats?
... that Samuel Lander founded the Williamston Female College in an abandoned hotel?
... that Leon Trotsky frequented a Jewish dairy restaurant in the Bronx but refused to tip, and the waiters retaliated by spilling hot soup on him?
... that Roger Farmer, the first NFL player from Barbados, reached the league after playing for schools that a newspaper described as having "terrible records"?
... that a recurrent famine has haunted Madagascar's southern regions since the 1930s?
... that Georgina Sutton was the first woman to be appointed the chief pilot of an Australian airline?
... that the ballot summary for 2024 Ohio Issue 1 was a flashpoint for legal action?
... that ballerina Marina Kondratyeva served the Bolshoi Ballet and its school for over 70 years?
... that Eternity in Flames, now commonly shown in Chinese schools, was banned during the Cultural Revolution?

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On this day

November 17

The Mortuary temple of Hatshepsut at Deir-el-Bahari

1796 – French Revolutionary Wars: French forces won the Battle of Arcole in a manoeuvre to cut the Austrians' line of retreat.
1968 – NBC controversially cut away from an American football game between the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets to broadcast Heidi, causing viewers in the Eastern United States to miss the game's dramatic ending.
1989 – Walt Disney Pictures released The Little Mermaid to theatres, beginning the Disney Renaissance.
1997 – Sixty-two people were killed by Islamist terrorists outside Deir el-Bahari (temple pictured) in Luxor, one of Egypt's top tourist attractions.
2009 – Administrators at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit discovered that their servers had been hacked, and thousands of emails and files on climate change had been stolen.

Nikephoros Melissenos (d. 1104)
Agnes of Jesus (b. 1602)
Maria Antonia Ferdinanda of Spain (b. 1729)
Nicolas Appert (b. 1749)

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Today's featured picture

The European bison (Bison bonasus), also known as the wisent, is a mammal in the family Bovidae. It is one of two extant species of bison. Having been hunted to extinction in the wild by the early 20th century, the European bison was reintroduced to the wild in various European countries by the 2010s, following captive breeding programmes. It is the heaviest wild land animal in Europe, and individuals in the past may have been even larger than their modern-day descendants. The largest bulls of the species have a mass of up to 1,000 kilograms (2,200 lb). The European bison is a herd animal, which lives in both mixed and solely male groups. Mixed groups consist of adult females, calves, young aged two to three years, and young adult bulls. A typical herd numbers around eight to thirteen animals on average. This male European bison was photographed in the Białowieża Forest, Poland.

Photograph credit: Charles J. Sharp

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