20 happened June 1895: Kiel Channel inaugurated

20/06/14

The Kiel Canal was inaugurated with a solemn ceremony attended by naval formations of numerous nations with nearly one hundred warships and followed by a naval magazine passed by Kaiser Wilhelm II on the Hohenzollern royal yacht.

For Italy the Special Squad participates under the command of Admiral Tòmaso di Savoia, Duke of Genoa on the royal yacht Savoia and made up of the battleships Re Umberto, Sardinia, Ruggero di Lauria, Andrea Doria, the torpedo rams Stromboli and Etruria and the torpedo cruisers Aretusa and Partenope. The Italian team will leave Kiel on 24 June to return to Naples on 1 August, after stops in Friederichshaven and in some British ports on the Channel.

[The Kiel Canal (Nord-Ortsee Kanal also called NOK for short) whose works began in 1887, is a 98 km artificial canal that connects the North Sea (in Brunsbüttel) to the Baltic Sea (in Kiel). The Canal, through which circumnavigation of the Jutland peninsula is avoided with a saving of 280 miles (519 km), is the most used waterway today. Strongly desired by the German Navy, it connects its bases in the Baltic to those of the North Sea avoiding the circumnavigation of Denmark]

Source: Military Navy