Learning Skills

Article of the day for April 16, 2019 is French battleship Courbet (1911) . Courbet was the lead ship of her class of four dreadnought battleships, the first ones built for the French Navy. In World War I, after helping to sink the Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser SMS Zenta in August 1914, she provided cover for the Otranto Barrage that blockaded the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea, and often served as a flagship. Although upgraded several times before World War II, by the 1930s she was no longer considered to be a first-line battleship and spent much of that decade as a gunnery training ship. A few weeks after the German invasion of France on 10 May 1940, Courbet was hastily reactivated. She supported Allied troops in the defence of Cherbourg during mid-June. As part of Operation Catapult, she was seized in Portsmouth by British forces on 3 July and was turned over to the Free French a week later. She was used as a stationary anti-aircraft battery and as an accommoda...

With a high of 59F and a low of 49F.

By DWIGHT GARNER from NYT Books https://nyti.ms/2DglOC1

By ANDREW MARTIN from NYT Books https://nyti.ms/2GqOfPP

By JARED DIAMOND from NYT Books https://nyti.ms/2VM4rA6

Article of the day for April 15, 2019 is Cadaver Tomb of René of Chalon . The Cadaver Tomb of René of Chalon is a Gothic funerary monument in the church of Saint-Étienne at Bar-le-Duc in northeastern France. It consists of an altarpiece and a limestone statue of a putrefied and skinless corpse which stands upright; its left arm is raised as if gesturing towards heaven. Completed sometime between 1544 and 1557, the majority of its construction is attributed to the French sculptor Ligier Richier. Other elements, including the coat of arms and funeral drapery, were added later. The tomb dates from a period of societal anxiety over death, as plague, war and religious conflicts ravaged Europe. It was commissioned as the resting place of René of Chalon, Prince of Orange, brother-in-law of Duke Antoine of Lorraine. Unusually for contemporary objects of this type, the skeleton is standing, making it a "living corpse", an innovation that was to become highly influential. It was desi...

With a high of 58F and a low of 49F.