Tag

disasters

• Disaster means "bad starThe word disaster comes from Italian dis-astro, a bad star, and belongs to a big family of star words.
• The telegraph and the first storm warningsFor the first time, news of a storm could travel faster than the storm itself.
• Father Benito Viñes, Padre HuracánA Jesuit priest in Havana who read the sky so well he issued the first scientific hurricane warning in 1875.
• Galveston 1900 and the dismissed Cuban warningsThe deadliest natural disaster in US history, and the Weather Bureau's refusal to listen to Havana.
• The Red Sea rift and Bab-el-MandebThe long narrow Red Sea is a crack where Africa and Arabia are pulling apart, closed at the south by the Gate of Grief.