Source: Hindu Press International
KAUAI, HAWAII, August 19, 2002: As we approach the first anniversary of the September 11 attack upon America, other events of importance on this date are coming to light. The one closest to home was Hurricane Iniki, which devastated our small island of Kauai on this day in 1993. It broke the US Navy’s wind meter, which last registered a wind gust of 250 miles per hour. Remarkably, just 100 years before Iniki, in 1893, Swami Vivekananda spoke on the opening day, September 11, of the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago, Illinois, uttering his famous line, “Brothers and sisters of America,” which brought the audience to a standing ovation. In 1948, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, founder and first governor-general of Pakistan, died on September 11. And in the course of researching the day, we find that on September 11, 1773, Benjamin Franklin wrote “There never was a good war or bad peace.”