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Hurricane Olivia was a Category 4 hurricane that hit Hawaii as a weakening tropical storm in September 2018, causing severe flooding and wind damage. Olivia was the first tropical cyclone to make landfall on either Maui or Lanai since modern weather records began. It was the fifteenth named storm, ninth hurricane, and sixth major hurricane of the 2018 Pacific hurricane season. A tropical depression formed southwest of Mexico on September 1 and strengthened into a tropical storm a day later. Olivia peaked as a Category 4 hurricane on September 7, with winds of 130 mph (210 km/h) and a minimum pressure of 951 mbar (28.08 inHg). On September 12 the storm weakened and made brief landfalls on Maui and Lanai, with winds of 45 mph (70 km/h). Torrential rainfall occurred on both Maui and Oahu, peaking at 12.93 in (328 mm) in West Wailuaiki, Maui. Olivia felled trees on Maui, and some homes and vehicles were swept away by floodwaters. (This article is part of a featured topic: 2018 Pacific hurricane season.)

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Did you know ...

Instant ramen, the base ingredient of a typical "spread"

... that in countries like the United States, prisoners supplement inadequate prison food by combining ingredients like instant ramen (pictured), mayonnaise and Kool-Aid into improvised meals called "spreads"?
... that the Royal Hibernian Hotel is thought to be the oldest hotel in Ireland?
... that Pierre Olaf's portrayal of Jacquot in the 1961 Broadway musical Carnival! earned him a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in 1962?
... that an English army devastated Lothian in Scotland so thoroughly in 1356 that the episode became known as Burnt Candlemas?
... that Bernette Ford was one of the first members of the Black Creators for Children, an organization that helped promote black authors and increase diversity in children's books?
... that The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy contains an idiosyncratic selection of topics, from "Aliens in Space" to "Rats and Mice"?
... that Natal frontier trader James Rorke specified that he be buried under three feet (0.9 m) of concrete because he feared Zulu graverobbers?
... that the graffiti artists hired for the video game Skitchin' were interviewed at a train station because they were too young to drive?

In the news

Krystsina Tsimanouskaya

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases the first part of its Sixth Assessment Report on the state of knowledge of climate change and its effects.
Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya (pictured) travels to Poland on a humanitarian visa after attempts by the Belarus Olympic Committee to repatriate her against her will.
In Olympic athletics, Venezuelan Yulimar Rojas breaks a 26-year-old world record in the women's triple jump, and world records are set in men's and women's 400 metres hurdles by Norwegian Karsten Warholm and American Sydney McLaughlin.

On this day

August 10: Islamic New Year (2021, 1443 AH)

German package of aspirin

1755 – The first wave of the Expulsion of the Acadians from the present-day Canadian Maritime provinces by the British began with the Bay of Fundy campaign at Chignecto.
1861 – American Civil War: The first major battle west of the Mississippi River, the Battle of Wilson's Creek, was fought.
1897 – German chemist Felix Hoffmann discovered an improved way of synthesizing acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin) (package pictured).
1953 – First Indochina War: The French Union withdrew its forces from Operation Camargue against the Việt Minh in central modern-day Vietnam.
2019 – Having already caused severe flooding in the Philippines, Typhoon Lekima made landfall in Zhejiang, China, and went on to become the costliest typhoon in Chinese history.

Joséphine Fodor (d. 1870)
Angus Lewis Macdonald (b. 1890)
Red Holzman (b. 1920)

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Today's featured picture

The Bank War was a political struggle that developed over the issue of rechartering the Second Bank of the United States during the presidency of Andrew Jackson (1829–1837). The affair resulted in the shutdown of the Second Bank and its replacement by state banks. Louis McLane, then Secretary of the Treasury, was a prominent figure during the Bank War. This portrait is a line engraving of McLane, produced around 1902 by the Department of the Treasury's Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) as part of a BEP presentation album of the first 42 secretaries of the treasury.

Engraving credit: Bureau of Engraving and Printing; restored by Andrew Shiva

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