Minas Geraes was a battleship built for the Brazilian Navy. Named in honor of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, the ship was laid down in April 1907 as the lead ship of her class, making Brazil the third country to have a dreadnought under construction. Two months after her commissioning on 5 January 1910, Minas Geraes was featured in an edition of Scientific American, which hailed her as "the last word in heavy battleship design and the ... most powerfully armed warship afloat". In November 1910, Minas Geraes was the focal point of the Revolta de Chibata (English: Revolt of the Whip). When Brazil entered the First World War in 1917, Britain's Royal Navy declined Brazil's offer to send Minas Geraes to join the Grand Fleet because the ship was outdated. In 1921, Minas Geraes was modernized in the United States. In the 1930s, after having a role in two mutinies during the previous decade, the battleship was modernized again, this time at the Rio de Janeiro Naval Yard. She underwent further refitting from 1939 to 1943. During the Second World War, Minas Geraes was anchored in Salvador as the main defense of the port, as she was too old to play an active part in the conflict. For the last nine years of her service life, Minas Geraes remained largely inactive, and she was towed to Italy for scrapping in March 1954. (more...)

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January 5: Twelfth Night (Western Christianity)

• 1477 – Burgundian Wars: Charles the Bold (pictured), the Duke of Burgundy, was killed at the Battle of Nancy, eventually leading to the partition of Burgundy between France and the House of Habsburg.
• 1527 – Felix Manz, co-founder of the original Swiss Brethren Anabaptist congregation in Zürich, was executed by drowning, becoming one of the first martyrs of the Radical Reformation.
• 1968 – Alexander Dubček came to power in Czechoslovakia, beginning a period of political liberalization known as the Prague Spring that still enabled the Communist Party to maintain real power.
• 1975 – The Tasman Bridge, crossing the Derwent River in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, was struck by the bulk carrier Lake Illawarra, killing seven of the ship's crewmen and five motorists on the bridge.
• 2005 – Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the Solar System, was discovered by a team led by Michael E. Brown using images originally taken on October 21, 2003, at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, U.S.

More anniversaries: January 4 – January 5 – January 6