Hurricane Florence makes landfall in US

Life-threatening storm lands in North Carolina

Hurricane Florence is ravaging the US East Coast, knocking out power to more than 600 000 homes, causing buildings to crumble and stranding residents.

Rains and surging seas have already inundated coastal areas. Dozens of people were rescued from a collapsing hotel in North Carolina.

Evacuation warnings are in place for 1.7 million people.

BBC News

The state capital of North Carolina is Raleigh, named after Sir Walter Raleigh. And Florence is a city in the Tuscany region of Italy.

Florence Dombey is a character in the novel Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens.

And the statistician Florence Nightingale was named after the Italian city!

Yes, she was a statistician – even though the most indelibly famous image of her is as the Lady with the Lamp during the Crimean War. She “exhibited a gift for mathematics from an early age and excelled in the subject under the tutelage of her father” – Wikipedia.

The Italian name for the city of Florence is Firenze – which is also the name of a character (a Centaur) in J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. And the Italian name for the city of Geneva, Ginevra, is Ginny Weasley’s real first name (as used by her great-aunt Muriel)!

Hopefully what Florence said was nothing like what the mama saw – which was against the Law!

Goodbye Rosie, the Queen of Corona!

“A corona … is an aura of plasma that surrounds the Sun and other stars,” Wikipedia.

Goodbye Rosie, the Queen of Corona!

Cider with Rosie is a novel by Laurie Lee.