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USS New Jersey (BB-62) is an Iowa-class battleship, and was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the U.S. state of New Jersey. Among the four completed Iowa-class battleships, New Jersey is notable for having earned the most battle stars for her combat actions, and for being the only battleship of the class to have served a tour of duty in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. During World War II, New Jersey shelled targets on Guam and Okinawa, and screened aircraft carriers conducting raids in the Marshall Islands. During the Korean War she was involved in raids up and down the North Korean coast, after which she was decommissioned in to the United States Navy reserve fleets. She was briefly reactivated in 1968 and sent to Vietnam to support U.S. troops before returning to the mothball fleet in 1969. Reactivated once more in the 1980s as part of the 600-ship Navy program, New Jersey was modernized to carry missiles and recommissioned for service. In 1983, she participated in U.S. operations during the Lebanese Civil War. New Jersey was decommissioned for the last time in 1991, having earned a Navy Unit Commendation for service in Vietnam and a total of 19 battle and campaign stars for combat operations during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Lebanese Civil War, and service in the Persian Gulf. She was donated to the Home Port Alliance in Camden, New Jersey, and began her career as a museum ship 15 October 2001. (more...)

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• 1582 – Spain, Portugal, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and most of the Italian states became the first countries to replace the Julian calendar with the Gregorian calendar.
• 1917 – Dutch exotic dancer Mata Hari (pictured) was executed by a firing squad for spying for Germany.
• 1951 – Mexican chemist Luis E. Miramontes synthesized the first oral contraceptive.
• 1966 – The Black Panther Party, a Marxist/Maoist African-American organization that promoted Black Power and self-defense in the United States, was founded in Oakland, California.
• 1997 – On the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, the first supersonic land speed record was set by Royal Air Force pilot Andy Green in the jet-propelled car ThrustSSC when it achieved a speed of 1,228 km/h (763 mph).
• 2003 – Chinese space program: Shenzhou 5, China's first manned space mission was launched, carrying astronaut Yang Liwei.

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