1588 England triumphs over the Spanish Armada due in part to high winds, and becomes a 16th-century superpower

1747-48 Many areas of the United States experience their highest recorded snowfall

1750 Benjamin Franklin publishes a proposal for an experiment to prove lightning is electricity

1758 Benjamin Franklin stops printing Poor Richard's Almanack

1780 The Great Hurricane of 1780 hits in the Caribbean, destroying British and French fleets and killing an estimated 22,000

1792 The first issue of the Farmer's Almanac is published

1841 President William Henry Harrison gives his inaugural address outdoors without a coat, and dies of illness a few weeks later

1845 Rain in Ireland exacerbates the Great Potato Famine and encourages emigration

1849 Joseph Henry, secretary of the Smithsonian, creates a telegraphic network of meteorological volunteers

1873 The US Army Signal Corps issues its first hurricane warning

1889 Heavy rains collapse the dam at Johnstown, Pa., killing more than 2,000

1927 Floods cause devastation and social upheaval in states all along the Mississippi River

1938 Hurricane strikes New York and New England, destroying coastal summer communities

2005 Hurricane Katrina strikes New Orleans, cripples the Gulf Coast and spurs mass migration from the area