This one is for the history buffs.
Suck it up, everybody: Here are nine years infinitely worse than 2018
https://nationalpost.com/news/suck-it-up-everybody-here-are-nine-years-infinitely-worse-than-2018
In the lead-up to New Year’s Day, it has become very trendy of late to claim that the preceding year was “the worst ever.” Clearly, some context is in order.
"1347
...The Black Death killed roughly one fifth of the world population, and up to sixty per cent of everyone in Europe. Panicked citizens who blamed the Jews for the plague would even launch a miniature Holocaust, razing thousands of European Jewish communities. The carnage of the Black Death was so overwhelming that, like many on this list, the people of 1347 feared that future generations (should they exist) would never believe that the plague had actually happened."
"536
This is the year that Harvard historian Michael McCormick has definitively pegged as the “worst year to be alive.” ... A volcanic eruption forced the entire world under ashen skies, kicking off the coldest decade in more than two millennia. Chroniclers at the time said the sun was so obscured by pollution it was possible to stare directly at it. Then, only five years later, the Plague of Justinian killed up to one quarter of whoever was left. Grinding poverty was already the norm in 536, but that year saw much of humanity descend into a generation or two of particularly acute misery."
"72,000 years ago
This list has plenty of instances of cities, peoples and civilizations being evaporated by tragedy. But none of these calamitous years come close to bringing the human species to extinction. For that, an unknown year 72,000 years ago still claims the title. Toba, a Sumatran supervolcano, shrouded the earth in a think haze that dropped global temperatures by as much as 20 degrees. ...On the grasslands of Africa, a relatively new primate now known as homo sapiens was hit so hard by hunger and cold that they were reduced to as little as 40 breeding pairs — well within range of being critically endangered. For context, there are currently 1,800 giant pandas living in the wild."
Suck it up, everybody: Here are nine years infinitely worse than 2018
https://nationalpost.com/news/suck-it-up-everybody-here-are-nine-years-infinitely-worse-than-2018
In the lead-up to New Year’s Day, it has become very trendy of late to claim that the preceding year was “the worst ever.” Clearly, some context is in order.
"1347
...The Black Death killed roughly one fifth of the world population, and up to sixty per cent of everyone in Europe. Panicked citizens who blamed the Jews for the plague would even launch a miniature Holocaust, razing thousands of European Jewish communities. The carnage of the Black Death was so overwhelming that, like many on this list, the people of 1347 feared that future generations (should they exist) would never believe that the plague had actually happened."
"536
This is the year that Harvard historian Michael McCormick has definitively pegged as the “worst year to be alive.” ... A volcanic eruption forced the entire world under ashen skies, kicking off the coldest decade in more than two millennia. Chroniclers at the time said the sun was so obscured by pollution it was possible to stare directly at it. Then, only five years later, the Plague of Justinian killed up to one quarter of whoever was left. Grinding poverty was already the norm in 536, but that year saw much of humanity descend into a generation or two of particularly acute misery."
"72,000 years ago
This list has plenty of instances of cities, peoples and civilizations being evaporated by tragedy. But none of these calamitous years come close to bringing the human species to extinction. For that, an unknown year 72,000 years ago still claims the title. Toba, a Sumatran supervolcano, shrouded the earth in a think haze that dropped global temperatures by as much as 20 degrees. ...On the grasslands of Africa, a relatively new primate now known as homo sapiens was hit so hard by hunger and cold that they were reduced to as little as 40 breeding pairs — well within range of being critically endangered. For context, there are currently 1,800 giant pandas living in the wild."
