Hurricane Earl is threatening the outer banks and is likely to do some damage all along the East Coast.
While my thoughts are with the people who've had to evacuate and I hope the damage is minimal, being removed from the storm by a couple thousand miles allows me to think of more trivial matters, such as how Kill Devil Hills got its name. I've checked the town's official website, and if the information is there, it's well hidden.
Normally I don't like to rely on Wikipedia, but the story there is a good one, about shipwrecks and rum (and the rum wasn't even cited as the causal factor in the shipwrecks). Apparently, the local wreckers would scavenge whatever they could from the wrecks and hide the salvaged rum behind the hills where the Wright Brothers eventually made their historic first flight. The name of the town doesn't derive so much from the shipwrecks as from the rum--it was reputedly strong enough to "kill the devil."
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