The history of the world is full of misery
and tragedy. Be it from natural disasters, human atrocities,
or the results of conflicts and wars between nations, there are literally hundreds of stories
that line the pages of our history books, and no doubt there will be more to come. Which are the most tragic stories of them
all? That’s what we’ll be exploring today! Welcome to this episode of The Infographics
Show, the worst days in the history of the world Okay, so we’re going to cover 10 events
that are considered some of the worst days in the history of the world. During our research we found that there were
many to choose from, so the list is not in any particular order. All the stories could be considered the worst
in their own right. And we haven’t covered every single war
there’s ever been, as that would be a whole other list. Instead, we’ve tried to dig out stories
that cover the centuries and many that go back even further and some that have been
forgotten over time. Let’s jump straight in and see what we discovered. 10. Pol Pot – Pol Pot was a Cambodian communist
revolutionary and politician who served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party
of Kampuchea from 1963 to 1981. He led the Khmer Rouge, a name given to the
followers of communism, from 1963 until 1997. Why does his name come up when we look at
the worst days in history? Well, from 1975 to 1979, what was known as
the Cambodian genocide was carried out by the Khmer Rouge regime under the leadership
of Pol Pot. Exact numbers of deaths are hard to calculate
because many were unrecorded, but somewhere between 1.5 to 3 million Cambodian people
were killed during this time. That is a staggering amount of people. Many were left at sites known as The Cambodian
Killing Fields. An analysis of 20,000 mass grave sites by
the DC-Cam Mapping Program and Yale University indicate at least 1,386,734 victims were executed
and abandoned in these areas. 9. Irish Potato Famine – From 1845 to 1849,
the people of Ireland suffered through a four-year period known as The Great Famine. It was a time of mass starvation, disease,
and emigration in the country. The cause of famine was potato blight, a disease
that ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s. However, the impact was severely worsened
by the actions and inactions of the government. Altogether about a million people in Ireland
are reliably estimated to have died of starvation and epidemic disease during the four-year
famine. The Irish famine killed nearly one-eighth
of the entire population and so was proportionally much more destructive than the vast majority
of famines in modern times. 8. Nanking Massacre - 1937 was the year of the
Nanking Massacre. For six weeks, the Imperial Japanese Army
brutally murdered hundreds of thousands of people, including both soldiers and civilians,
in the Chinese city of Nanking. At that time, Nanking was the capital of Nationalist
China. It took decades for the city and its citizens
to recover from the savage attacks. There are no official numbers for the death
toll in the Nanking Massacre, though estimates range from 200,000 to 300,000 people. And it is also known as the Nanking Massacre
or the Rape of Nanking because between 20,000 and 80,000 women were sexually assaulted. Soon after the end of the war, General Matsui
and his lieutenant Tani Hisao, were convicted for war crimes by the International Military
Tribunal for the Far East. They were executed. 7. Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – World
War Two lasted for 6 years from 1939 to 1945. It was the deadliest conflict in human history
with 15 million military deaths, 45 million civilian deaths, and 25 million wounded. But it’s what ended that war, which will
go down as causing some of the darkest days in history. On August 6, 1945, an American B-29 bomber
dropped the world’s first atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The huge explosion wiped out 90% of the city,
killing an estimated 90,000 to 146,000 people. Tens of thousands more later died of radiation
exposure. Three days later, a second atomic bomb was
dropped on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 40,000 - 80,000 people. This tragic example of wartime destruction
also led to the end of World War Two, as Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s
unconditional surrender, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.” So the only good that can be taken from these
events is that by the war ending at least further casualties were avoided. 6. 2004 Asian Tsunami – Anyone who was around
in 2004 will remember the tragic news on Boxing Day (December 26) when one of the biggest
tsunamis ever was created from an earthquake deep in the Indian Ocean. We were just talking about Hiroshima. Well, the energy from this earthquake is thought
to have had the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs. The rupture was more than 600 miles (965.6
km) long, displacing the seafloor by 10 yards (9.1 m) horizontally and several yards vertically. That sent a tidal wave that caused catastrophic
damage in 14 countries, including India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Maldives, Myanmar, Somalia,
Sri Lanka, Thailand, Bangladesh, South Africa, Madagascar, Kenya, Tanzania and the Seychelles. According to British news paper The Telegraph,
230,000 people lost their lives, and 1.7 million people were left homeless after the 2004 Boxing
Day tsunami. 5. The Rwandan Genocide – 1994 marked the year
of The Rwandan Genocide, a mass slaughter that took place over a 100-day period from
April 7 to mid-July 1994. Members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the
east central African nation of Rwanda murdered as many as 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi
minority, so it was also known as the genocide against the Tutsi. Among the first victims of the genocide were
the Hutu Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and her 10 Belgian bodyguards. This created a political vacuum that an interim
government of extremist Hutu Power leaders from the military high command filled on April
9. Following the genocide, more than 2 million
people fled Rwanda, crowding into refugee camps in the Congo and other neighboring countries. 4. The Black Death – Stepping back a bit further
in time now, we look at the Black Death and without doubt some of the bleakest days in
the world’s history. The Black Death spread across Europe in the
years 1346 to 1353. The frightening name most likely came from
a mistranslation of the Latin word atra meaning both “terrible” and “black.” There were varying symptoms to this fatal
disease. Some would get an infection of the lungs,
leading to breathing difficulties that left people dead within two days. Another form consisted of boils erupting under
the armpits and swollen lymph nodes in the groin area. It is estimated that the Black Death killed
75 to 200 million people 1347. Up to 60% of Europe's total population was
wiped out. In total, the plague may have reduced the
world population from an estimated 450 million down to 350 to 375 million in the 14th century. It took 200 years for the world population
to recover to its previous level. 3. 9/11 – 9/11, which occurred on September
11, 2001, is the worst terror attack to take place on American soil and is still etched
in the memories of many people. 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist
group al-Qaeda hijacked four Boeing airplanes and carried out suicide attacks against targets
in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the Twin
Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just
outside of Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. On that day, almost 3,000 people were killed. The incident led to extensive bombing of Afghanistan
as troops hunted down the leader of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and it also eventually led
to a second war in Iraq. 2. The Vietnam War – When talking about the
worst days in history, it’s hard not to mention the Vietnam War. It officially ran from August 5, 1964 to May
7, 1975, so it was not just a few days but many years. An estimated 9,087,000 military personnel
served on active duty during that time. Just how bad were the days of that war? Let’s look at some statistics put together
by retired Sergeant First Class (SFC) David Hack, who volunteered for service in Vietnam
in 1968, joining the 1st Infantry Division: A total of 58,148 military personnel were
killed in Vietnam, 75,000 were severely disabled, 23,214 were 100% disabled, 5,283 lost limbs,
and 1,081 sustained multiple amputations. The first man to die in Vietnam was James
Davis in 1961. Five men killed in Vietnam were only 16 years
old, while the oldest man killed was 62 years old. Of those killed, 61% were younger than 21
years old, and 11,465 of those killed were younger than 20 years old. Of those killed, 17,539 were married, and
the average age of the men killed was 23.1 years. 1. Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) extinction - For
number one, we’re stepping as far back in time as we can. To be precise, we will be going back 66 million
years ago to an event known as The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, which is also known as the
Cretaceous–Tertiary or K–T extinction. This was one grey day folks when all of a
sudden there was a mass extinction of 80% of the plant and animal species on Earth. Okay, so what happened? It is generally thought that the K–T extinction
was caused by the impact of a massive comet or asteroid 6.2 to 9.3 miles (10 to 15 km)
wide. It’s hard for this theory to be inconclusively
proven, but there is a good amount of evidence to support it. A huge crater 112 miles (180 km) in diameter
was discovered buried beneath sediments of the Yucatán Peninsula near Chicxulub, Mexico,
and has been dated to the right period. And a second smaller crater, which predates
the one at Chicxulub by about 2,000 to 5,000 years, was discovered at Boltysh in Ukraine
in 2002. Whatever exactly happened, it was certainly
one of the worst days in the history of the world. So, what other bad days has the world had
that we didn’t mention? Let us know in the comments . Also, be sure
to watch our other video called – Worst Punishments In The History of Mankind. Thanks for watching, and as always, don't
forget to like, share and subscribe. See you next time!
Also, the creator of this video has no idea what a day is, but that's a discussion for another time.
This channel is pretty bad. I stopped watching when they called Hitler a socialist.
The Infographics Show is incredibly bad. It is an epitomy of stereotypical American ignorance/centrism, but they try to support it with facts, which makes for an incredibly shit education channel.
Yeah because ww2 apparently never happened.
Oh yes those 4 million vietnamese civilian dont matter
"When talking about the worst days in history, it's hard not to mention the Vietnam War"
I can think of several days (or events, since the Vietnam War isn't a day) that are orders of magnitudes worse than the Vietnam War without even needing to research, which this channel supposedly does. Number 2? Did they legitimately just say the Vietnam War was the worst day in modern history (since they name the KT extinction as number 1)?
This channel is notoriously poorly researched (a pretty good case study showing spouting numbers doesn't mean you're well informed) and biased as fuck, but this is a new level.
The infographics show is just a really shitty often incorrect version of Life Noggin or Kurzgesagt.
Ofc! because everthing that happens to Murrka is 10x more importanter!
What about Irak - Iran war. This forgotten war is one of the worst things that happened in second half of 20th century. They literally send hundreds of thousands people to WW1 style of warfare including human wave attacks and widespread use of chemical weapons against infantry and also civilians.