Cuba, a little over 100 years ago, was a colony of Spain. Its inhabitants, however, had begun to find this situation rather irksome and their discontent was increased by their US neighbours who disliked having this European power upon their doorstep.
There was brouhaha of various kinds and ruaille buaille, and finally, in February 1898, when the American battleship Maine was blown up in Havana harbour, the US declared itself at war with Spain. Thus began a chain of events which led to the naming of the famous Privy Hurricane.
As 1898 advanced, and the season for hurricanes drew nigh, Willis L. Moore, chief of the Weather Bureau, became fearful for the safety of American naval units in the region. He called on President McKinley to establish a network of hurricane warning stations in the West Indies. And he must have put his case persuasively because the president declared that he was more afraid of hurricanes than of the Spanish navy. He ordered Moore to implement his plan immediately.
Meanwhile, however, a fleet of battleships left Spain, bound westward. There was concern that these might pose a threat to the east of the US so observation posts were hurriedly built at strategic points along the Atlantic coastline.
However, the Spanish ships innocently headed for the Cuban port of Santiago, where they were promptly trapped by the Americans. And that, more or less, was that. Hostilities were over, not a single hurricane appeared and, in due course, Spain ceded Cuba, Puerto Rico and some other islands to the American authorities in return for $20 million.
It had been, as the US Secretary of State, John Hay, remarked, "a splendid little war".
The coastal look-out stations, built to observe the Spanish attack that never came, were promptly abandoned by the navy and taken over by the Weather Bureau as ideal observing stations for an extended hurricane warning network.
But when the inventory was checked at one such installation on the coast of Carolina, it was found to lack the most essential of accoutrements: the privy and its hut had disappeared.
There was, of course, a national fuss and a tribunal. It was discovered that a local citizen, being admiring of the privy's quality, had taken it unto himself and installed it on his nearby property. The outhouse was reluctantly returned, complete with contents - only to be completely demolished very shortly afterwards on October 2nd, 1898, in a famous storm that, even to this day, is remembered as the Privy Hurricane.