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The Japanese battleship Tosa was a planned battleship of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Designed by Yuzuru Hiraga, Tosa was to be the first of two Tosa-class ships. Displacing 39,900 long tons (40,540 tonnes) and armed with ten 410 mm (16.1 in) guns, these warships would have brought Japan closer to its goal of an "eight–four" fleet (eight battleships and four battlecruisers). Compared with earlier designs the ships would have had higher steaming speed despite increased tonnage, flush decks, and inclined armor. Tosa was ordered in 1918, laid down in February 1920 in Nagasaki and launched in December 1921. All work on the ship was halted in February 1922 after the Washington Naval Conference and the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty. As the vessel had to be destroyed in accordance with the terms of the treaty, it was subjected to various tests to gauge the effectiveness of Japanese weaponry before being scuttled on 9 February 1925. (This article is part of a featured topic: Battleships of Japan.)

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On this day

February 9: Feast day of Apollonia in Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy

John Quincy Adams

1825 – After no candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the previous year's presidential election, the United States House of Representatives chose John Quincy Adams (pictured) as president in a contingent election.
1945 – World War II: Allied aircraft unsuccessfully attacked a German destroyer in Førde Fjord, Norway.
1950 – U.S. senator Joseph McCarthy accused 205 employees of the State Department of being communists, sparking a period of strong anti-communist sentiment known as McCarthyism.
1975 – The spacecraft and crew of the Soviet Soyuz 17 mission returned to earth after 29 days in orbit at the Salyut 4 station.
2020 – Japanese figure skater Yuzuru Hanyu won the Four Continents Championships to become the only man to complete a Super Slam.

Adele Spitzeder (b. 1832)
Ella D. Barrier (d. 1945)
Vladimir Guerrero (b. 1975)
Margareta Hallin (d. 2020)

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Today's featured picture

Fragaria vesca, commonly called the wild strawberry among other names, is a perennial herbaceous plant in the rose family that grows naturally throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere. The wild strawberry produces edible fruits, which have been consumed by humans since the Stone Age. The fruit is strongly flavored, and is still collected and grown for domestic use and on a small scale commercially as an ingredient for commercial jam, sauces, liqueurs, cosmetics and alternative medicine. This focus-stacked photograph shows a wild strawberry fruit in a garden in Bamberg, Germany.

Photograph Reinhold Möller

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