Cape Cod History

1888: Great blizzard shuts down New England. 1978: Eurasian curlew flies across Atlantic to The Vineyard

The Blizzard of '88

On this day in 1888, ordinary life in Massachusetts came to a standstill. One of the most destructive blizzards ever to strike the East Coast raged for 36 hours. Called "the White Hurricane," the storm produced a combination of blinding snow, deep drifts, driving wind, and severe cold.

Big cities were especially hard hit. In Springfield, Worcester, and Boston, food supplies soon ran low. So did heat, for most homes were warmed by coal-fired stoves. Coal moved by rail, and trains were not moving. The disruption caused by the storm persuaded city officials to invest in underground utilities and transportation. The Boston subway system, the nation's first, was one positive outcome of the Blizzard of 1888.

Rare sighting on Vineyard sets off flurry amid bird-watchers

The Eurasian Curlew, Numenius arquata, is a wader in the large family Scolopacidae. It is the one of the most widespread of the curlews, breeding across temperate Europe and Asia. In Europe, this species is often referred to just as "the Curlew", and in Scotland a colloquial name is "whaup".

On this day in 1978, a lone Eurasian curlew apparently forced across the Atlantic by storms had taken refuge in the tidal flats of Menemsha, touching off a "flurry of excitement in the bird-watching world," according to The New York Times.

The two-foot wader - numenius arquala - had been seen in North America only twice before, in Georgia in the early 1800s and on Cape Cod two years earlier. Its normal range is from England to Iceland in winter and extending south to North Africa in summer.

Some bird-lovers speculated that the curlew seen at Menemsha was the same one witnessed on Cape Cod in 1976, while others concluded it was a second bird forced across the ocean by that winter's unusually fierce storms.

"By Thursday, hundreds of people from as far away as Texas and Florida had come singly or in groups to see the same wayward bird," the Times reported, "and Roger Tory Peterson, the nation's foremost bird watcher, was pronouncing its presence and survival here 'remarkable' ."

"As soon as the word gets out, the hard-core birders who have become so numerous lately will be here in droves," Peterson told the Times.