Hurricane Elena was an unpredictable and damaging tropical cyclone that affected the United States Gulf Coast in late August and early September 1985. Threatening popular tourist destinations during Labor Day weekend, Elena repeatedly defied forecasts, triggering an unprecedented series of evacuations; many residents and tourists were forced to leave twice in a matter of days. Elena's slow movement off western Florida resulted in severe beach erosion and damage to coastal buildings, roads, and seawalls. The hurricane devastated the Apalachicola Bay shellfish industry, killing off vast oyster beds and leaving thousands of workers unemployed. Farther west, Dauphin Island in Alabama endured wind gusts as high as 130 mph (210 km/h) and a significant storm surge. In Mississippi, over 13,000 homes were damaged and 200 were entirely destroyed. Overall, nine people died as a result of the hurricane: three in Florida, two in Louisiana, one in Arkansas, two in Texas from rip currents, and one in a maritime accident. Damage totaled about $1.3 billion, and power outages from the storm affected 550,000 homes and businesses.

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Elena

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

590:

Gregory I became pope, the first one to come from a monastic background. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Gregory_I

1651:

English Parliamentarian forces under Oliver Cromwell won the Battle of Worcester, the final battle of the Third English Civil War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Worcester

1901:

The National Flag of Australia, a Blue Ensign defaced with the Commonwealth Star and the Southern Cross, flew for the first time atop the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Australia

1925:

The USS Shenandoah, the U.S. Navy's first rigid airship, was torn apart in a squall line over Ohio (wreckage pictured). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Shenandoah_(ZR-1)

1941:

The Holocaust: SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch first used the pesticide Zyklon B to execute Soviet POWs en masse at Auschwitz; eventually it was used to kill about 1.2 million people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zyklon_B

_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:

spieler: 1. A person who speaks fluently and glibly. 2. Hence, a person who loudly solicits crowds of customers; a barker. 3. (Australia, New Zealand, slang) A swindler, a gambler. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spieler

___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:

It cannot for a moment be doubted that an art work to be alive, to awaken us to its life, to inspire us sooner or later with its purpose, must indeed be animate with a soul, must have been breathed upon by the spirit and must breathe in turn that spirit. It must stand for the actual, vital first-hand experiences of the one who made it, and must represent his deep-down impression not only of physical nature but more especially and necessarily his understanding of the out-working of that Great Spirit which makes nature so intelligible to us that it ceases to be a phantasm and becomes a sweet, a superb, a convincing Reality.   --Louis Sullivan https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Louis_Sullivan