The 1916 Texas hurricane was an intense and quick-moving tropical
cyclone that caused widespread damage in Jamaica and South Texas in
August 1916. A Category 4 hurricane upon landfall in Texas, it was the
strongest tropical cyclone to strike the United States in three decades.
Throughout its eight-day trek across the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico,
and Texas, the hurricane caused 37 fatalities and inflicted
$11.8 million in damage. Becoming a small tropical storm by August 12,
it skirted the southern coast of Jamaica as a hurricane on August 15,
killing 17 people and causing extensive damage to crops and buildings.
The storm then moved into the Gulf of Mexico and intensified into the
equivalent of a major hurricane on the modern-day Saffir–Simpson
scale. On the evening of August 18, it struck South Texas near Baffin
Bay with winds of 130 mph (215 km/h). The storm's evolution has been
inferred from scant historical weather data analyzed by the Atlantic
hurricane reanalysis project in 2008.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916_Texas_hurricane>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1793:
French Revolution: A Royalist counter-revolutionary army was
decisively defeated at the Battle of Savenay, although fighting
continued in the War in the Vendée for years afterward.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_the_Vend%C3%A9e>
1938:
The first living specimen of a coelacanth (example pictured),
long believed to be extinct, was discovered in a South African
fisherman's catch.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coelacanth>
1984:
An engine fire caused Aeroflot Flight 3519 to crash shortly
after takeoff from Krasnoyarsk, USSR, killing all but one of the 111
people on board.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_3519>
2008:
The Guinean military engineered a coup d'état, announcing that
it planned to rule the country for two years prior to a new presidential
election.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Guinean_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
run someone ragged:
(originally US, idiomatic) To exhaust; to demand excessive effort or
work from somebody.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/run_someone_ragged>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
I think we're at a time in American history that's probably
analogous to, maybe, Rome before the first emperors, when the Republic
started to fall … I think if you look at the pattern of events, if you
look at the disputed election of 2000, can you imagine? In America,
people are trying to recount ballots and a partisan mob is pounding on
the glass and threatening the counters? Can you imagine that? Can you
imagine a political party which does its best to keep any
representatives from another party — who've even been affiliated with
another party — from getting a business job in the nation's capital?
Can you imagine a political party that wants to redistrict so that its
opponents can be driven out entirely? … it's a different time in
America and the Republic is — this election is about a lot more than
jobs. I'm not sure everybody in America sees it right now. But I see it,
I feel it.
--Wesley Clark
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wesley_Clark>