November 25, 1839:   An enormous cyclone caused a 40-foot storm surge that hit Coringa, Andhra Pradesh, wiped out the harbour city, destroyed 20,000 ships and vessels in its bay, and killed 300,000 people.

• Coringa is a tiny coastal village of the East Godavari district, in Andhra Pradesh, India. Coringa consists of the village and one adjacent island, which was whimsically named Hope Island by British officials in the hope that it would be protected from environmental disasters.
• In 1789, it was brutally hit by a cyclone that left some 20,000 dead.
• It is said that Henry Piddington, an official of the British East India Company, coined the term cyclone sometime around 1840 after looking at the destruction caused in 1789 and 1839 by a “swirling circle.”