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Meteorologists today use a tornado intensity scale called the Enhanced Fujita Scale to assess a tornado's strength, use satellites and doppler radar to track storm cells and see tornadoes form, and and use “storm chasers” to follow the paths of tornadoes. But none of that was around in 1884. In 1884 there was nothing but the reports by survivors. Those reports suggest a tornado outbreak on a massive scale, and damage that devastated whole communities, but leave a picture of what might have been one of the worst tornado outbreaks in history that is so incomplete that the true scale of the storm is a mystery, and so is called “the enigma tornado outbreak.”
Who doesn't want to start their day feeling minty fresh? That question goes back farther than you might imagine.
On November 26, 1914 the battleship HMS Bulwark was moored in the river Medway, part of a fleet assembled in anticipation of a possible raid against London by the Imperial German fleet when, without any warning, as one witness reported, “there was a flash, a cloud of smoke, and the ship vanished.”
