April 5, 1936: A tornado kills 216 people in
Tupelo, Mississippi. At the time, it was the 2nd-deadliest tornado in American history, after the Tri-State Tornado that hit Missouri, Illinois and Indiana in 1925. As late as 2022, it remains the 4th-deadliest.
It was 1 of at least 14 tornadoes that struck the Southeast on April 5 and 6, killing at least 454 people and injuring at least 2,500 others. Over two hundred people died in Georgia alone, centered on the town of Acworth, making it the deadliest disaster ever recorded in the State. Among the other communities particularly hard-hit were Columbia, Tennessee and Anderson, South Carolina.
Tupelo is 116 miles southeast of Memphis, Tennessee; 133 miles northwest of Birmingham, Alabama; and 202 miles southeast of Nashville, Tennessee. Among the people who lived in Tupelo and survived the tornado that hit that city were a young couple with a one-year-old boy. When the boy was 13, the couple moved to Memphis, taking him with them. Their names were Vernon and Gladys Presley. The son's name was Elvis.
On such threads does history sometimes hang.
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April 5, 1936 was a Sunday. Baseball was in Spring Training. Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There was one score on this historic day, and it was in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals: The Detroit Red Wings beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 3-1 at the Olympia Stadium in Detroit. The Wings went on to win the series, 3 games to 1.
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