Hurricane Hattie was the strongest and deadliest tropical cyclone of the 1961 Atlantic hurricane season. The ninth tropical storm and seventh hurricane of the season, Hattie became a major hurricane on October 28 and strengthened to Category 5, with reported maximum sustained winds of 165 mph (270 km/h). It produced hurricane-force winds and caused one death on San Andres Island, and it dropped rainfall of up to 11.5 in (290 mm) on Grand Cayman. It weakened to Category 4 before making landfall on October 31 in British Honduras (now Belize). In Belize City, 70% of the buildings were damaged, leaving more than 10,000 people homeless and prompting the government to relocate the country's capital inland to Belmopan. Across the country, 307 people were killed. Elsewhere in Central America, Hattie killed 11 people in Guatemala and one in Honduras. (This article is part of a featured topic: 1961 Atlantic hurricane season.).

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_topics/1961_Atlantic_hurricane_season

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1842:

Nabucco, an opera by Italian Romantic composer Giuseppe Verdi that established his reputation, premiered at La Scala in Milan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabucco

1915:

The Panama–California Exposition (guide book cover shown), celebrating the inauguration of the Panama Canal, opened in San Diego's Balboa Park. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama%E2%80%93California_Exposition

1945:

World War II: In a coup d'état, Imperial Japanese Army officers ousted the government of French Indochina. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_in_French_Indochina

2010:

The first legal U.S. same-sex marriages south of the Mason–Dixon line took place in the District of Columbia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_the_District_of_Columbia

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

ply: 1. (transitive, obsolete) To bend; to fold; to mould; (figuratively) to adapt, to modify; to change (a person's) mind, to cause (a person) to submit. 2. (intransitive) To bend, to flex; to be bent by something, to give way or yield (to a force, etc.). […] 3. (transitive) To work at (something) diligently. 4. (transitive) To wield or use (a tool, a weapon, etc.) steadily or vigorously. 5. (transitive) To press upon; to urge persistently. 6. (transitive) To persist in offering something to, especially for the purpose of inducement or persuasion. 7. (transitive, transport) To travel over (a route) regularly. 8. (intransitive, obsolete) To work diligently. 9. (intransitive, nautical, obsolete) To manoeuvre a sailing vessel so that the direction of the wind changes from one side of the vessel to the other; to work to windward, to beat, to tack. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ply

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

Good government is known from bad government by this infallible test: that under the former the labouring people are well fed and well clothed, and under the latter, they are badly fed and badly clothed.   --William Cobbett https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/William_Cobbett