Hurricane Dean was the strongest tropical cyclone of the 2007 Atlantic
hurricane season. It was the most intense Atlantic hurricane since
Hurricane Wilma of 2005, tying for seventh overall. Additionally, it
made the third most intense Atlantic hurricane landfall. A Cape
Verde-type hurricane that formed on August 13, 2007, Dean took a
west-northwest path from the eastern Atlantic Ocean through the Saint
Lucia Channel and into the Caribbean Sea. It strengthened into a major
hurricane, reaching Category 5 status on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane
Scale before passing just south of Jamaica on August 20. The storm made
landfall on the Yucatán Peninsula on August 21 as a powerful Category 5
storm. It crossed the peninsula and emerged into the Bay of Campeche
weakened, but still a hurricane. It strengthened briefly before making
a second landfall in Veracruz near Tecolutla, Mexico, on August 22.
Dean drifted to the northwest, weakening into a remnant low which
dissipated uneventfully over the southwestern United States. The
hurricane's intense winds, waves, rains and storm surge were
responsible for at least 45 deaths across ten countries and caused
estimated damages of US$1.5 billion. Through the affected regions,
cleanup and repair took months to complete. Its long swath of damage
earned its name retirement from the World Meteorological Organization's
Atlantic hurricane naming lists.
Read the rest of this article:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dean>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1425:
Pope Martin V issued a papal bull establishing what later became the
Catholic University of Leuven, the largest, oldest and most prominent
university in Belgium.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_University_of_Leuven>
1824:
Forces led by General Antonio José de Sucre defeated a Royalist army
in the Battle of Ayacucho, ending the Peruvian War of Independence.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Ayacucho>
1872:
P. B. S. Pinchback took office as Governor of Louisiana, the first
African American governor of a U.S. state.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P._B._S._Pinchback>
1946:
The Doctors' Trial, the first of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, began
to prosecute doctors who were allegedly involved in Nazi human
experimentation during World War II.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctors%27_Trial>
1979:
A World Health Organization commission of scientists certified the
global eradication of smallpox, making it the only human infectious
disease to date to have been completely eradicated from nature.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/smallpox>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
comport (v):
1. To be in agreement (with); to be of an accord.
2. (reflexive) To behave (in a given manner)
<http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/comport>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
A different conception of society, very different from that which now
prevails, is in process of formation. ... Acknowledging, as a fact, the
equal rights of all its members to the treasures accumulated in the
past ... it seeks to establish a certain harmonious compatibility in
its midst — not by subjecting all its members to an authority that is
fictitiously supposed to represent society, not by trying to establish
uniformity, but by urging all men to develop free initiative, free
action, free association.
--Peter Kropotkin
<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Peter_Kropotkin>
Show replies by date