The youth hostel movement was born when a group of hikers lead by Richard Schirrmann found shelter in a school in a thunderstorm.
Schirrmann was a teacher as well as an outdoorsman. During World War One he served in the German Army, participating the 1915 Christmas truce, something that lingered in his area for quite some time after Christmas. He founded the Youth Hostel Association in 1919 and founded the children's village "Staumühle" on a former military training ground near Paderborn, where my German ancestors hail from. HE served as the President of the International Youth Hostelling Associating until the Nazis forced him to resign and put the control of the hostels under the Hitler Youth in 1936. He rebuilt the association after the war. He married late, in 1942, but had six children with his wife before dying in 1961 at age 87.
The SS Cartago telegraphed a report of a hurricane near the Yucatan, the first radio warning of a tropical storm.
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