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Track of the storm

The 1916 Texas hurricane was an intense and quick-moving tropical cyclone that caused widespread damage in Jamaica and South Texas in August 1916. A Category 4 hurricane upon landfall in Texas, it was the strongest tropical cyclone to strike the United States in three decades. Throughout its eight-day trek across the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and Texas, the hurricane caused 37 fatalities and inflicted $11.8 million in damage. Becoming a small tropical storm by August 12, it skirted the southern coast of Jamaica as a hurricane on August 15, killing 17 people and causing extensive damage to crops and buildings. The storm then moved into the Gulf of Mexico and intensified into the equivalent of a major hurricane on the modern-day Saffir–Simpson scale. On the evening of August 18, it struck South Texas near Baffin Bay with winds of 130 mph (215 km/h). The storm's evolution has been inferred from scant historical weather data analyzed by the Atlantic hurricane reanalysis project in 2008. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

SoloTürk demonstration aircraft

... that the aerobatic demonstration aircraft (pictured) used by SoloTürk is also used in military operations of the Turkish Air Force?
... that when a batch of the peppermint liqueur Minttu turned yellow because of iron contamination, Americans just marketed it as an "older vintage"?
... that Elisabeth Dmitrieff, daughter of a Russian noble, was sent by Karl Marx to the Paris Commune and fought in its defense before falling into obscurity?
... that Irving Berlin, who co-owned the Music Box Theatre from its opening in 1921, still checked the theater's receipts before his death in 1989?
... that English women's footballer Shameeka Fishley scored a hat-trick in her newly-established Turkish team's first match?
... that Elcysma westwoodi is considered "the most damaging lepidopteran pest of Prunus × yedoensis"?
... that Suresh Jadhav led the development of the COVID-19 vaccine marketed as Covishield?
... that the 2020 song "Boris Johnson Is a Fucking Cunt" spawned a sequel in 2021: "Boris Johnson Is Still a Fucking Cunt"?

In the news

Flooding in Kuantan on 20 December

Flooding in Kuantan

Floods in Malaysia (pictured) leave at least 37 people dead and displace more than 68,000 others.
Gabriel Boric, leader of Apruebo Dignidad, is elected President of Chile.
Typhoon Rai results in at least 390 deaths in the Philippines.
A building fire in Osaka, Japan, kills 25 people.
Siaosi Sovaleni is elected as prime minister by the Legislative Assembly of Tonga.

On this day

December 23: Night of the Radishes in Oaxaca City, Mexico; Festivus

Preserved specimen of a coelacanth

583 – Yohl Ikʼnal acceded to the throne of the Maya city-state of Palenque.
1793 – French Revolution: A Royalist counter-revolutionary army was decisively defeated at the Battle of Savenay, although fighting continued in the War in the Vendée for years afterward.
1938 – The first living specimen of a coelacanth (example pictured), long believed to be extinct, was discovered in a South African fisherman's catch.
1984 – An engine fire caused Aeroflot Flight 3519 to crash shortly after takeoff from Krasnoyarsk, USSR, killing all but one of the 111 people on board.
2008 – The Guinean military engineered a coup d'état, announcing that it planned to rule the country for two years prior to a new presidential election.

Dost Mohammad Khan (b. 1793)
Edward Blyth (b. 1810)
Chryssa (d. 2013)

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Today's featured picture

General George Washington Resigning His Commission is a large-scale oil-on-canvas painting by the American artist John Trumbull depicting General George Washington's resignation as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army on December 23, 1783, to the Congress of the Confederation. The painting now hangs in the United States Capitol rotunda. This engraved vignette, produced for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, draws heavily on Trumbull's painting, and was used on the reverse of the 1000-dollar denomination of the first issue of National Bank Notes from 1875.

Engraving credit: Luigi (Louis) Delnoce and Frederick Girsch, after John Trumbull; restored by Andrew Shiva

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