I would like to start this post by sending out my condoleances to all the families and friends who have lost someone in the terrible incident on September 11th, 2001. It was truly a major and shocking event.
All loss of life is sad, and premature deaths like this are specially mind-boggling.
However, a friends comment yesterday triggered some thoughts which I wanted to put in there about major tragedies. I wanted to put the event in perspective compared to other major disasters. In a few minutes, I came up with a few of them in history. Here is what it looks like:
The Black Plague(natural dis.) 1347-1351 Europe 75,000,000 deaths
The Great Leap Forward (manmade) 1958-1962 China 40,000,000 deaths
World War II (manmade) 1939-1945 World 30,000,000 deaths
Armenian Genocide (manmade) 1914-1923 Turkey 1,200,000 deaths
Rwandan Genocide (manmade) 1994 Africa 900,000 deaths
Tsunami (natural) 2004 Asia 187,000 deaths
Battle of Cannae - Rome vs Hannibal Italy 70,000 deaths
Iraq War (30,000 Iraqi, 3,000 U.S.) 2003-? Iraq 33,000 deaths
World Trade Center 2001 U.S. 3,000 deaths
Some of the numbers above are just insane.
The Black Plague actually wiped out about half of Europe's (then-smaller) population. The Great Leap Forward was politically motivated by the Communists to increase China's industrial power at any cost, including feeding the people. World War II had millions of soldiers killed, 6 million Jews exterminated, and Stalin destroyed as much as 20 million Russian lives through murder or starvation.
Some of the smaller numbers are still amazing as well.
The Rwandan Genocide, still recent, ran over 100 days. Count it.... it's the equivalent of three Sept 11's per day for over three months! The very old Battle of Cannae was actually one of the worst carnages in history. The Roman army was destroyed by Hannibal and his elephants. 70,000 soldiers were killed in a single day.
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