The year was 1938 and many countries were still engulfed in the Great Depression. Rumblings of World War II were heard as Hitler and the Nazis grew in power. In Germany, laws were passed disenfranchising the Jewish population and in October an estimated 15,000 Jewish people, originally from Poland, were sent to the Polish border. Enraged by his parents’ deportation, a seventeen-year-old assassinated the Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris. This gave the Nazis the excuse they needed and on the night of 9 November, Nazis stormed through cities burning synagogues and breaking windows in Jewish homes and businesses. 30,000 Jewish men were imprisoned in concentration camps. The sounds of breaking glass gave the infamous night its name–Kristallnacht.
On 21 September, disaster struck New York and New England in the form of a category three hurricane nicknamed the Long Island Express. Only one weather forecaster saw it coming and he was overruled by others in the Weather Bureau who believed it would turn back out to sea before posing a threat. At 3:30 p.m. just before an astronomical high tide, the storm struck Long Island with fourteen to eighteen foot tides and moved across to New England, hitting Rhode Island particularly hard. In the end, it was estimated that the storm was responsible for 700 deaths and another more than 700 injured. It destroyed 4,500 homes and farms and damaged another 15,000. Cars, electrical and telephone lines, livestock, produce, boats, and shoreline commerce were also devastated. Continue reading
