Today’s Steadily Rising Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
On September 8, 1900, Galveston—a low-elevation sand island just off Texas’s Gulf coast—was struck by a category 4 hurricane that decimated the island and killed thousands of people, making it the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
On the day before the hurricane struck, heavy swells were noticed in the Gulf, and by the early morning of the 8th, coastal areas of Galveston had begun to flood. Rain showers started later that morning, with heavy rains beginning by noon. By 3:30 p.m. water covered half the city, and it continued to steadily rise until about 8:30 p.m. In total, the storm surge rose about 15-20 feet, completely submerging the island (which sat just 9 feet above sea level). In addition to the flood of water, hurricane-velocity winds started around 5 p.m., topping out at an estimated 140 miles per hour and turning debris into deadly projectiles. The storm center passed over around 8:30 p.m., and finally, around 11 p.m., the wind began to subside.
The next morning, survivors discovered the hurricane had left mass devastation in its wake. The lowest estimate of those killed is 6,000, though estimates of 8,000 or 12,000 are also common. More than 3,600 houses (about half of the residence portion of the island) were totally destroyed, with all remaining structures suffering varying levels of damage.
The vast number of dead, combined with the heat and humidity, quickly created a horrible stench across the island. Residents originally tried to bury many of the dead at sea, but when the tide washed the bodies back to shore, they began to burn the bodies instead.
A victim lies beneath the wreckage.
A nationwide relief effort was launched to help Galveston’s devastated population, and in the months and years following the hurricane, Galveston rebuilt. Between 1902 and 1904 a 3-mile-long seawall was built to try to mitigate the damage of future storm surges. Likewise, from 1904 to 1910, sand was used to raise the city’s elevation 17 feet near the seawall, with a gradual downward slope toward the bay.
Men recovering bodies.
At the time of the hurricane, Galveston had been a major port and a leading city in Texas and the Gulf region. However, afterward, Galveston never regained its former glory, and Houston became the powerhouse in the region instead.
Preparing to cremate a rotting body.
Culled from: Newspapers.Com
Arcane Excerpts
Parents would be wise to heed this timeless advice from Sex Searchlights and Sane Sex Ethics: An Anthology of Sex Knowledge by Dr. Lee Alexander Stone (1926):
Prevention of the Habit of Masturbation.
The keynote of preventing the habit is, carefully to watch the child from its earliest infancy. We know that not infrequently stupid or vicious nursemaids, wet-nurses, and even governesses, ignorantly or deliberately induce the habit in children under their charge. This, of course, must be prevented. Even children of the age of nine, ten, eleven years should not be left alone, but always be under supervision. Too close friendship between boys or girls, particularly of different ages, should be looked upon with suspicion.
A number of children should never sleep in the same room without supervision by an older person.
The sleeping together of two in the same bed, whether it be two children or a grown person and a child, should not be permitted under any circumstances. I admit of no exceptions to this demand. It makes no difference whether the other person is a mother, a father, a brother or a sister. Leaving out of the question any deliberate element, the thing is dangerous; for, very often, unintentionally, unwittingly, masturbation, is initiated by this intimate contact.
The child – boy or girl – should sleep alone, on a rather hard mattress. The covering should be light. A coverlet may be put over the feet. The child should always sleepi with the arms out upon the cover or blanket, never under the same. If this is done from childhood on, it is very easy to get used to this way of sleeping, and many a case of masturbation will thus be obviated. The child should not be permitted to loll in bed; it must be taught to get up as soon as it awakes in the morning. The general bringing up must be of a strengthening, hardening character; and this applies both to the body and the will.
Every factor liable to give rise to the habit should be removed. Thus, for instance, eczema about the genitals, strongly acid urine, seatworms, and the like, should be treated until cured. That anything having a tendency prematurely to awaken the sexual instinct should be rigorously avoided, goes without saying.
[I had to look up ‘seatworms’ – it’s an old term for pinworms. – DeSpair]
I remember hearing that long-buried coffins were washed out of cemeteries by the storm.