On this day in 1900: Orville Wright, uncomfortably encamped at Kitty Hawk, writes his sister:
“This is ‘just before the battle,’ sister, just before the squall begins. About two or three nights a week we have to crawl up at 10 or 11 o’clock to hold the tent down. When one of these 45-mile nor’easters strikes us, you can depend on it, there is little sleep in our camp for the night. Expect another tonight. We have passed through one which took up two or three wagon-loads of sand from the N.E. end of our tent and piled it up eight inches deep on the flying machine.
“We certainly can’t complain of the place. We came down here for wind and sand, and we have got them.”