Typhoon Haiyan: What are the strongest and most destructive tropical cyclones on record?

This October storm was obviously well before modern tracking methods, so its exact size is hard to determine. But the damage of this Caribbean storm, which mostly hit the Antilles, is undeniable. On Oct. 10 it struck Barbados, and destroyed almost every home on the island. The Encyclopedia Britannica records that "witness reports in Barbados and Saint Lucia claimed that even sturdy stone buildings and forts were completely lost to the wind, with heavy cannons being carried hundreds of feet." On the island of Sint Eustatius, a tiny trading entrepot, about 5,000 lives were lost. On Martinique, at the time a center of French sugar-production that relied on slave labor, roughly 9,000 lives were lost. Coming amid the American Revolution, in which British fleets vied with French ones for supremacy in the Caribbean, the storm also had an impact on the course of the war. The French lost 40 vessels in the storm, and the British were likewise bloodied.