Hurricane Dennis was the fourth named storm, second hurricane, and first major hurricane of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. The hurricane set several records for early season hurricane activity, becoming both the earliest formation of a fourth tropical cyclone and the strongest hurricane ever to form before August. Dennis hit Cuba twice as a Category 4 hurricane and made landfall on the Florida Panhandle in the United States as a Category 3 storm less than a year after Hurricane Ivan did so. Dennis caused at least 88 deaths (41 direct) in the U.S. and Caribbean and caused $2.23 billion in damages (2005 US dollars) to the United States, as well as an approximately equal amount of damage in the Caribbean, primarily on Cuba.

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

_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:

1819: Stamford Raffles founded Singapore, a new trading post for the British East India Company. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamford_Raffles)

1820: Sponsored by the American Colonization Society, the first African American immigrants established a settlement in present-day Liberia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Liberia)

1922: France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the Washington Naval Treaty to limit naval armaments. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Naval_Treaty)

1952: The Duchess of Edinburgh learned of her accession to the British throne while in a tree-top hotel in Kenya, becoming Queen Elizabeth II. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_II_of_the_United_Kingdom)

1959: Jack Kilby filed the patent for the first integrated circuit. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/integrated_circuit)

_____________________ Wikiquote of the day:

"You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down — up to a man's age-old dream; the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order — or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course." -- Ronald Reagan (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan)