13. Unlucky Coringa
Few cities have been as unlucky as Coringa, India. Until 1839, it was a bustling Bay of Bengal port city, near the mouth of the Godavari River on India’s east coast. It had a population numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and a harbor that hosted thousands of ships annually, busily loading and unloading goods and produce.
Today, Coringa is a tiny village near the coast, of no distinction or note, and with a population of no more than a few thousand. The drastic decline in fortunes was caused by a pair of devastating cyclones, one in 1789, and an even more destructive one fifty years later, in 1839.