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History’s Most Catastrophic Man-made Errors

Khalid Elhassan December 9, 2020 34 min

Wanggongchang Explosion - Beijing — The Wanggongchang Explosion devastated Beijing. Pintrest

18. At The Peak of This Disaster, Tens of Thousands Starved to Death Each Day

Refugees trying to flee from the famine-stricken Ukraine in 1933. Wikimedia

Stalin’s Terror famine reached its peak in June, 1933, when an estimated 28,000 died of starvation each day. That was nearly 1200 deaths every hour, or 20 every minute. Millions died of straightforward starvation, as their hungry bodies first consumed their fat reserves, then their muscles, before their lives were extinguished. Others fell to illnesses that their malnourished bodies were unable to resist.

Yet more succumbed to waves of epidemics, such as typhus, that swept the Ukraine and southern Russia during the disaster. The final death toll is unknowable, but in the Ukraine, the tally ranges from a low of three million according to conservative modern estimates, to a high of ten million.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.