Glimpse history through old images of Tupelo, Mississippi, USA.
Tupelo is a small city in the northeast of the US State of Mississippi.
The Tupelo Tornado 1936
On the evening of Sunday April 5th, 1936, an F5 tornado three blocks wide appeared out of nowhere and without warning.
48 blocks of the small city of Tupelo, then home to 7,300 residents, was flattened by the 300 mile an hour winds.
In this short film, hear how survivors crawled their way out of buildings and cars on this eventful night.
Tupelo Tornado of 1936 – Kip Gordon on YouTube
Tupelo Tornado 1936
Key Facts
- Evening of Sunday 5, 1936
- F5 tornado, 3 block wide, 300+ miles an hour
- Damage to 48 city blocks
- 1,100+ homes destroyed
- 10 churches destroyed
- 4 schools destroyed
- About 250 people died
- About 700 people injured
- An unknown number of African-American dead and injured were not added to the casualty list by officials
- One of America’s worst tornadoes
- The storm barely missed the home of one-year-old Elvis Presley
