Miami lies in ruins after what's being called "the worst hurricane in history of country," with 75 confirmed dead and a staggering $100 million in property damage. Over 2,000 buildings have been destroyed by 100-mile-per-hour winds, including the steel-reinforced Miami Tribune building and major bank structures. Every single vessel in Miami's harbor has been sunk, including the steamship Nohab, formerly owned by the ex-Kaiser of Germany. The city docks are completely gone, swept away by massive seas, and Miami Beach sits under three feet of water. Communication lines are severed, with only makeshift radio stations getting desperate messages through to New Orleans, pleading for troops, food, and medical supplies. Meanwhile, the storm is barreling toward the Gulf Coast, threatening Louisiana just weeks after another devastating hurricane hit the region.

This catastrophic hurricane struck at the height of the Florida land boom, when Miami was experiencing explosive growth as America's newest playground for the wealthy. The 1920s Florida real estate bubble had transformed sleepy coastal towns into glittering resorts almost overnight, attracting massive investment and speculation. This disaster would help burst that bubble, marking the beginning of Florida's economic collapse that preceded the national stock market crash by three years. The storm also highlighted America's vulnerability in an era before modern weather prediction and emergency response systems.

• A 75-year-old Nebraska judge named W.F. Bryant plans to put himself on a bread-and-water diet for five days starting Monday to determine if such sentences are 'cruel and inhuman' — after 14 years of imposing this punishment on bootleggers
• A deep-sea diver named Klass Everts just walked across the bottom of the Elizabeth River in 50 minutes as a 'new form of competitive water sports,' and he's challenging other divers to a 7-mile underwater walk across Hampton Roads next month
• The destroyed steamship Nohab in Miami harbor was 'formerly owned by ex-Kaiser of Germany' — a fascinating detail about how German imperial assets ended up in American waters
• The Miami Tribune building that was demolished was described as 'cement structure reinforced by steel' and 'regarded as one of the more substantial' buildings, showing just how powerful this storm was
• A battered schooner called 'Carson of Nassau, N.P.' washed up on Talbot Island with 'no signs of life aboard' — a haunting detail from the storm's maritime toll

• That ex-Kaiser's steamship Nohab destroyed in Miami? It was likely seized as war reparations after WWI — Germany lost its entire merchant fleet under the Treaty of Versailles, with ships distributed to Allied nations
• The $100 million damage estimate equals roughly $1.7 billion today, making this one of the costliest natural disasters of the 1920s — and it helped pop Florida's real estate bubble three years before the stock market crash
• Judge Bryant's bread-and-water sentences were actually legal then — the Supreme Court wouldn't rule such punishment 'cruel and unusual' until decades later, in cases involving prison conditions
• The World Court story mentions the U.S. seeking 'full equality' with League of Nations members — America never did join the League, one of the great 'what-ifs' of 20th-century diplomacy
• Miami Beach being under three feet of water was especially shocking because it was brand new — the resort city had only been incorporated in 1915 and was still being developed as America's answer to the French Riviera