Hurricane Georges hit Louisiana in 1998, doing $30.1 million in damage and causing three deaths. Attaining a peak intensity of 155 mph (250 km/h) on September 20, the storm tracked through the Greater Antilles and later entered the Gulf of Mexico. Half a million residents in Louisiana evacuated from low-lying areas before the Category 2 storm made landfall on the 28th in Mississippi. Many homes outside the levee system were flooded by the storm surge, and 85 fishing camps on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain were destroyed. An estimated 160,000 residences were left without power; beaches were severely eroded by the slow-moving storm. Precipitation in Louisiana peaked at 2.98 inches (75.69 mm) in Bogalusa, and wind gusts reached 82 mph (132 km/h). In the wake of the hurricane, the Federal Emergency Management Agency opened 67 shelters across the state, and covered insurance claims totalling $14,150,532, including from Puerto Rico and Mississippi. The Clinton administration appropriated $56 million in disaster relief to regions in Louisiana for recovery from Tropical Storm Frances and Hurricane Georges. Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_Hurricane_Georges_in_Louisiana> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 678: Pope Agatho, later venerated as a saint in both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, began his reign as Pope. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Agatho> 1743: War of the Austrian Succession: In the last time that a British monarch personally led his troops into battle, George II and his forces defeated the French in Dettingen, Bavaria. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dettingen> 1899: A. E. J. Collins scored 628 runs not out, the highest-ever recorded score in cricket. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._E._J._Collins> 1905: The crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin began a mutiny against their oppressive officers. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_battleship_Potemkin> 1952: The Congress of Guatemala passed Decree 900, redistributing unused lands of sizes greater than 224 acres (0.9 km2) to local peasants and having a major effect on the nation's land reform movement. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_900> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: philander: To make love to women; to play the male flirt. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/philander> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:   I believe it is a sacred duty to encourage ourselves and others; to hold the tongue from any unhappy word against God's world, because no man has any right to complain of a universe which God made good, and which thousands of men have striven to keep good. I believe we should so act that we may draw nearer and more near the age when no man shall live at his ease while another suffers. These are the articles of my faith, and there is yet another on which all depends — to bear this faith above every tempest which overfloods it, and to make it a principal in disaster and through affliction. Optimism is the harmony between man's spirit and of God pronouncing His works good.   --Helen Keller <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Helen_Keller>