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Nagato was a super-dreadnought battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy, completed in 1920 as the lead ship of her class. She carried supplies for the survivors of the Great Kantō earthquake in 1923. The ship briefly participated in the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and was the flagship of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto during the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, but did not participate in the attack itself. Apart from picking up survivors after the Battle of Midway, the ship spent most of the first two years of the Pacific War training in home waters. She was attacked by American aircraft in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, but did not fire her main armament against enemy vessels until the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944. She was lightly damaged during the battle, but the navy was running out of fuel and did not fully repair her. The only Japanese battleship to survive World War II, the ship was sunk in mid-1946 by nuclear weapon tests during Operation Crossroads. (Full article...)

Wu Zhaonan

• ... that Wu Zhaonan (pictured), a comedian recognized by the government of Taiwan as a "national treasure", also created Mongolian barbecue?


• ... that the wildlife of Iceland includes around 550 species of lichen but no reptiles or amphibians?


• ... that in 1342, John FitzWalter accused men from Colchester of invading and damaging his park at Lexden, and soon after besieged Colchester for more than two months?


• ... that Fatih, originally named Deepsea Metro II, is Turkey's first drillship?


• ... that palaeontologist Varavudh Suteethorn has helped name and describe more than 25 fossil species from Thailand, including dinosaurs, fish, mammals, turtles, and crocodylomorphs?


• ... that the 2018 Zürich ePrix was the first motor race held in Switzerland since the 1954 Swiss Grand Prix at Bremgarten?


• ... that Wallachian statesman Stroe Leurdeanu was sentenced to live as a monk for conspiring against a rival family?


• ... that the genome of the flatworm Otomesostoma auditivum is nearly six times larger than the human genome?

Asteroid 101955 Bennu

• The sample-return spacecraft OSIRIS-REx arrives at the asteroid 101955 Bennu (pictured).


• Former U.S. President George H. W. Bush dies at the age of 94.


• 
  Magnus Carlsen defeats Fabiano Caruana to retain the World Chess Championship.


• 
  NASA's InSight successfully lands on Mars.


• Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko declares martial law after Russian forces seize three ships in the disputed Kerch Strait near Crimea.

December 8: Rōhatsu in Japan

Margaret Hughes

• 
  1660 – Margaret Hughes (pictured), appeared professionally on the English stage, and is thought to have been the first woman to do so.


• 
  1880 – At an assembly of 10,000 Boers, Paul Kruger announced the fulfilment of the decision to restore the South African Republic government and volksraad.


• 
  1963 – After being hit by a lightning strike while in a holding pattern, Pan Am Flight 214 crashed near Elkton, Maryland, U.S., killing all 81 people on board.


• 
  1998 – The Australian Cricket Board's cover-up of Shane Warne and Mark Waugh's involvement with bookmakers was revealed.


• 
  2013 – After a fatal car accident in the Little India region of Singapore, angry mobs of passers-by attacked the bus involved and emergency vehicles, the first riot in the country in over 40 years.

John Peckham (d. 1292) · Georges Méliès (b. 1861) · Ann T. Bowling (d. 2000)