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