The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 made landfall on the city of Galveston, Texas on September 8, 1900. It had estimated winds of 135 miles per hour (217 km/h), making it a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale. The hurricane caused great loss of life. The death toll has been estimated to be between 6,000 and 12,000 individuals. The number most cited in official reports is 8,000, giving the storm the third-highest number of casualties of any Atlantic hurricane, after the Great Hurricane of 1780, and 1998's Hurricane Mitch. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is to date the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States.

Read the rest of this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston_Hurricane_of_1900

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1895: The Empire of Japan and the Qing Empire signed the Treaty of Maguan, an 'unequal' treaty that ended the First Sino-Japanese War. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Shimonoseki)

1937: Daffy Duck made his debut in a short cartoon by the Warner Bros. Studio. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daffy_Duck)

1942: Captured French General Henri Giraud escaped from his castle prison. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_Giraud)

1961: The CIA-backed Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba began. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion)

1975: The Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, ending the Cambodian Civil War. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_Civil_War)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

"We ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning." -- Thornton Wilder (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thornton_Wilder)