Today In History

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
February 10, 1906


HMS Dreadnought is launched at Her Majesty Dockyard Portsmouth.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
Due to her revolutionary design (steam turbine propulsion, uniform main battery of 5 × twin 12 inches guns), this capital ship instantly makes obsolete everything existing in navies around the world and sparks a naval arms race in the build-up to the First World War.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
February 12, 1865


Following the desire of the French government to have a general rescue service at sea, the Société Centrale de Sauvetage des Naufragés  (SCSN) is created under the leadership of Admiral Charles Rigault de Genouilly and Théodore Gudin, Painter of the Fleet. The SCSN, placed under the protection of Empress Eugénie, will federate at the national level all the societies existing locally in the French port cities.

In 1967, the merger of the SCSN with the Hospitaliers-Sauveteurs bretons (HSB) will give birth to the Société Nationale de Sauvetage en Mer (SNSM).

Present days, according to its official website , the SNSM is :

     - 250 sites including 214 rescue stations

     - 41 all-weather boats
     - 35 1st class speedboats
     - 75 2nd class speedboats
     - 42 light speedboats
     - 90 motorized nautical vehicles (sea scooters)
     - 473 inflatables including 192 semi-rigid.

     - 9,030 volunteers including 5315 on-board lifeguards, operational by order of the CROSS in less than 20 minutes, 24 hours a day,
       365 days a year in all weather conditions

     - 7,833 rescue operations
     - 28,772 people rescued

     - 12 rescuers who died on operation or on training


Here we are. Of course, as always, there were many other historical topics on this date, some beautiful and some ugly, and some perhaps considered as more important. I chose to talk about this one. After all, history is just who we are and what we do...
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

February 17, 1864


During the American Civil War, the sloop-of-war USS Housatonic, maintaining the blockade of Charleston, South-Carolina, is sunk by confederate submarine H. L. Hunley .

This is the first time in history when a warship was sunk by submarine attack.

February 19, 1945


Operation Detachment. At Iwo Jima , the US marines take their first step on Japanese "sacred ground".

If some of them know that it will be hard, doubtless none of them knows to what degree...
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

March 18, 1965


During the space mission Voskhod 2 , the Soviet cosmonaut Alexeï Leonov performs the first extravehicular activity in history.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
“ I was heading into the unknown and no one in the world could tell me what I was going to encounter there. I didn't have a manual. It was the first time. But I knew it had to be done […]. I climbed out of the hatch without hurrying and carefully extricated myself. I gradually moved away from the ship […]. It was above all the silence that struck me the most. It was an impressive silence, such as I have never encountered on Earth, so heavy and so deep that I began to hear the sound of my own body [...]. There were more stars in the sky than I had expected. The sky was deep black, but at the same time, it shone with the glow of the Sun... The Earth seemed small, blue, clear, so tender, so lonely. It was our home, and I had to defend it like a holy relic. She was absolutely round. I don't think I ever knew what 'round' meant until I saw the Earth from space. "