HURRICANE

British single-seat fighter aircraft manufactured by Hawker Aircraft, Ltd., and used with great effect in many areas of the world during World War II. A low-wing monoplane designed and first flown in 1935, it was the first airplane of the Royal Air Force to exceed a speed of 300 miles per hour (483 kilometres per hour) in level flight. The first production-line plane flew in 1937. In some 20 modifications the Hurricane served as a fighter-bomber, an attack plane, and a carrier plane. More than 14,000 Hurricanes in various adaptations were made before manufacturing was halted in 1944. In its original conformation, the Hurricane had a ceiling of 36,000 feet (10,980 m) and a maximum speed of 330 miles/h (530 km/h) and was armed with eight .303-calibre machine guns in its wings. In that version, British pilots shot down over 1,500 Luftwaffe planes in their first year of war; all other British aircraft combined hardly exceeded that total. Later modifications included more and heavier guns, including 40-millimetre cannon, and bomb and rocket racks. The well-defined eye and the rain bands of Hurricane Hyacinth about 805 kilometres (500 miles) south of the southern tip of Baja California, Mexico, photographed from an Earth-orbiting satellite on Aug. 9, 1976. By courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; photograph, AP/Wide World Photos Hurst, Fannie born Oct. 18, 1889, Hamilton, Ohio, U.S. died Feb. 23, 1968, New York, N.Y. American novelist, dramatist, and screenwriter. Hurst grew up and attended schools in St. Louis, Missouri. She graduated from Washington University in 1909 and continued her studies at Columbia University in New York City. With the aim of gathering material for her writing, she worked at various times as a waitress, as a nursemaid, and in a sweatshop, and she made a sea voyage to Europe in steerage. Her first book, Just Around the Corner, a collection of short stories, appeared in 1914. She went on to write more than 40 novels and story collections. Hurst's novels and stories tell tales of ordinary people, often women, in sentimental, florid, and occasionally overwritten prose. Their stylistic shortcomings notwithstanding, they are imbued with vitality and unmistakable touches of real life and close observation of places and characters. A number were turned into successful motion pictures (e.g., Imitation of Life ), for some of which she wrote screenplays (e.g., Back Street ). Her autobiography, Anatomy of Me, appeared in 1958.