Saturday, July 30, 2016

What Was The 'Worst' Year In History? 10 Historians Give Their Answer

"Black Death." Online Media. World Book Advanced. World Book, 2015. Web. 3 Feb. 2015.

Matthew Pratt Guterl, Business Insider/Slate: I asked 10 historians to nominate the 'worst' year in history — here are their picks

When news of the truck killings in Nice, France, broke last week, I started seeing variations of the same sentiment on Twitter and Facebook: Is this the worst year ever, or what? Terror attacks, Zika, Brexit, police shootings, Syria, Trump, record-hot temperatures, the losses of Prince and David Bowie—this has been one unrelenting turn around the calendar.

Have terrifying events truly piled up on each other in 2016, in a way they didn’t in any other year in human history? Or is it impossible to judge the awfulness of a year while it’s still unfolding? Do we just notice negative happenings more these days because of our high levels of connectivity? And what does “worst year” even mean—“worst year” for Americans, for humanity, for the planet?

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WNU Editor: If I put on my historian hat .... I would nominate 1348 (Black Death). My Russian hat would be 1917 (Russian Revolution), followed by 1941 .... the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. My North American hat .... 1863 was the year of Gettysburg and the mid-way point of the American Civil War.

As for the future .... a nuclear war or a major catastrophic event like a super volcano or a massive meteorite strike .... that year would be regarded as the worst year in history.

5 comments:

TWN said...

1945 the year of the first atomic explosion, were all going to feel the effects of that one day, and that will be the worse year, all other bad years will pale in comparison.

fazman said...

1996 when l got hitched :(

Dave Goldstein said...

1994, when my son was born and 1995 when my father died. all the other years are all bad in some way or another.

Dave Goldstein said...

Oh and my father was there when the first bomb went off. Los Alamos worker.

RRH said...

Bad years aplenty.


500 the start of the Dark Ages in Europe

1096 The first Crusade

1235 Statute of Merton first enclosure law

1484 Aztecs begin the practice of human sacrifice

1492 Columbus reaches the new world

1654 Anthony Johnson made the first legal slave in the U.S.

1770 the First (of many under British rule,) Bengal famine

1839 the first Opium War

1861 U.S. (first) U.S. Civil War

1874 Winston Churchill Born

1889 Addolph Hitler Born

1898 the Banana Wars begin

1899 the Philliphine -American War

1914 WW1

1918 Spanish Flu

1925 Margaret Thatcher Born

1929 Stock Market crash

1937 Sino Japanese War

1939 WW2

1941 Dick Cheney born

1948 first Arab-Israeli war

1950 Korean War

1952 first hydrogen bomb tested

1953 Joseph Stalin dies --- that's right..

1955 Vietnam War

1959 the first known case of HIV infection

1968 Martin Luther King Jr. Murdered ,1968 Jason Kenney Born _ coincidence?

1974 the Khmer Rouge take power in Cambodia

1979 Operation Cyclone approved and Margaret Thatcher is elected UK PM

1980 Ronald Reagan elected President of the U.S.

1986 Chernobyl Disaster

1988 Canada U.S. free trade agreement signed

1991 the end of the USSR, Yugoslav civil wars begin.

1994 Rwanda Civil War and first Chechnya war

2000 George W. Bush elected President of the U.S.

2001 9/11, invasion on Afghanistan

2003 the invasion of Iraq


Too depressing to go on. It's been all downhill since.



But on a good note,

2015 my first Grandchild was born... Look out World.