[Article déjà publié le 8 octobre 2024]
Since the advent of man as a dominant species on the planet Earth, we have continued to count every day, each year, countless losses. Not all will be memories, and others will be anchored there forever. But since the beginnings of humanity and history, what day has experienced the most victims and especially what is the cause?
Man and war
If our species has evolved in order to build our current society, something unique has continued since the dawn of time: war. Whether it is wars of ideology or religion, territory, justified or not, man made war one of his specialties. Over time, technologies have evolved, we have passed sticks and pebbles, to swords and arches with rifles and weapons of mass destruction.
Inevitably with war come victory, defeat and dead. If one can easily think that war is behind the deadliest day in history, this is not the case. And this, even if certain battles or attacks have made a considerable number of victims for a day.
We will therefore quite easily think of the two atomic bombings of Japan, on August 6 and 9, 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In a world war context, the United States had then launched a final offensive on the Japanese Empire using two atomic bombs which will make some estimates respectively:
- 70,000 dead on August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima
- 40,000 dead on August 9 in 1945 in Nagasaki
But, even with these colossal figures, these two events are not one of the deadliest days in history. They are even lower than the night of March 10 to 11, 1945 where the Americans launched Meetinghouse Operation And bombed Tokyo causing nearly 100,000 victims. But, although this number of victims is once again very (too) high, it is still not the deadliest day in history.
Man in the face of nature
If man manages to defend himself against himself, he cannot do much about the elements. There are many natural disasters with history with history with sometimes very high human balance sheets. Even if we escaped the apocalypse 66 million years ago, we have known our share of disasters that turned the whole earth upside down.
Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions … All these words, beyond, to refer to the most destructive events that we can live on our planet are above all the witnesses that we are defenseless when our own planet makes his.
If through the ages we first thought of messages from the anger of deities wishing to punish humanity for its misdeeds, science has finally explained that these phenomena that can be predicted, as best they can, are inherent in our planet. Whether we like it or not, they will arrive.
In the same way that all civilizations have known war, all have experienced more or less destructive natural disasters. The Romans experienced the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, reducing ashes Pompeii and its inhabitants, the Portuguese saw Lisbon to be almost razed from the map following an earthquake in 1755. More recently in 2004, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and several Indian Ocean countries were struck by a tsunami from a violent earthquake Tens of thousands of people.
Demonstrating the unleashed force of the elements and their potentially murderous impact.
January 23, 1556: the supposed day the deadliest in history
According to historians, to find the day when humanity experienced its greatest number of losses in a single day, you have to go back 468 years and take our eyes to China.
On January 23, 1556 in the space of a day, the earth would have lost nearly 830,000 souls in one time. By cross -checking the testimonies and scientific evidence, historians were able to determine the identity of the culprit behind this dark day: an earthquake of a magnitude estimated in 8 and 8.3 which would then have resulted in fires, landslides …
The latter, whose epicenter was located near the city of Huaxian, would have made the province of Shanxi a devastated region. As highlighted the study published in the journal Geoscience reports In March-April 2017 and written by Jean-Paul Poirier of the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris.
Of course, overall, certain conflicts or certain natural disasters have made many more victims in this macabre competition. However, no event supposedly did worse than the earthquake of January 23, 1556 and its 830,000 dead.
Source : Science / Iflscience
With an unwavering passion for local news, Christopher leads our editorial team with integrity and dedication. With over 20 years’ experience, he is the backbone of Wouldsayso, ensuring that we stay true to our mission to inform.
