Ireland is struck by the most damaging…

Ireland is struck by the most damaging cyclone in three hundred years, on January 6, the Night of the Big Wind.

The powerful European windstorm sweeps across Ireland beginning in the afternoon, causing severe damage to property and several hundred deaths; twenty to twenty-five percent of the houses in north Dublin are damaged or destroyed, and forty-two ships are wrecked.

The storm attains a very low barometric pressure of 918 mbars and tracks eastwards to the north of Ireland, with gusts of over 100 knots (185 km/h; 115 mph), before moving across the north of England to continental Europe, where it eventually dissipates.