Unusual Historic Crises and Calamities

39. A Fatal Bacterium

Modern research and scholarship have pinned the Black Death on Yersinia pestis, a bacterium with no spores. According to genetic analysis, a strain of Yersinia pestis that emerged during the Black Death caused that plague. However, it did not die off at the end of that period. Instead, it has lingered around ever since, mutating and reemerging periodically to cause further illnesses and plague outbreaks.

The most recent major outbreak, known as the Modern Plague or the Third Pandemic, erupted in China in the mid-nineteenth century. It was carried by rats aboard steamships all over the world, and claimed an estimated 10 million people.

38. Origins of the Black Death

The Black Death first erupted in Mongol-ruled China and Central Asia in the 1330s. Traveling along the Silk Road with merchants and Mongol armies, the disease took about fifteen years to reach Europe in 1347. However, although the plague itself first erupted in China, the culprit bacteria might have originated in Europe, thousands of years before the Black Death.

Research in 2018 found evidence of Yersinia pestis in a Swedish tomb dating back to 3000 BC. It may have caused a devastating plague thousands of years ago that led to the Neolithic Decline around 3000 BC, when Europe’s population took a nosedive. It also caused Justinian’s Plague, a sixth-century disease that, as seen further down this list, rivaled the Black Death in lethality and devastation.

37. Catapulting the Plague

The plague first reached Europe through a siege in the then-distant Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea. In 1346, the Mongols set out to capture the city of Caffa, now Feodosiya, in the Crimea, and subjected it to a prolonged siege. In an era of poor sanitation and medical knowledge, sieges were often as fatal for the besiegers as the besieged, because the besieging armies encamped around the targeted city often came down with illnesses.

That is what happened during the Mongol Siege of Caffa, and the illness the besiegers came down with was the Black Death. The Mongol commander, Jani Beg, decided to share the misery by catapulting plague-infected bodies over the walls into Caffa, to infect the inhabitants. Some Genoese traders in the city fled, and carried the plague with them to Mediterranean ports. They arrived in Sicily in 1347, which they infected, and from there, the Black Death spread north to the Italian mainland and thence rapidly to the rest of Europe.

36. Rapid Spread of the Black Death

When the Black Death hit Europe and the Mediterranean, it spread swiftly, carried by fleas that fed on rats, and jumped from rats to humans, infecting them with Yersinia pestis. The Genoese traders who had carried the plague with them when they fled from Caffa stopped in Constantinople along the way, gifting it and the rump Byzantine Empire with the pandemic before they continued on to Sicily.

From Sicily in 1347, the plague swiftly reached the islands of Sardinia and Corsica, plus Naples in Italy, that same year. The following year, the plague spread to the rest of mainland Italy, France, two-thirds of the Iberian Peninsula, southern England, the Balkans, Egypt, Anatolia, and the Eastern Mediterranean in general. In 1349, the plague reached Germany and Central Europe, most of Ireland, plus the rest of England, the Middle East, and North Africa. In 1350, Scotland, Scandinavia, and the Baltic shores were hit. By 1351, the Black Death had ravaged all of Europe, except for a relatively unaffected pocket in Poland, plus the western parts of Belorussia and Ukraine.

35. A Gruesome Death

By all accounts, the Black Death was a terrible way to go. Especially so its most common form, the bubonic plague, named after the buboes, or swellings, that marked its victims. Painful swellings, or buboes, first appeared in the groin and armpits, where plague-infested fleas gravitated. The first swellings usually occurred near the site of the initial infection, caused by the flea’s bite, or by the victim’s scratching of the bite site. From there, the buboes to the rest of the body.

Next came a high fever, interspersed by bouts of vomiting blood. Muscle cramps, chills, decomposing skin, and severe seizures, were also among the plague’s symptoms. Burning up with a steadily worsening fever, the victims tossed and turned in the throes of agonized delirium. If the victim lasted for more than a few days, he or she might get to experience the plague’s final ravages: gangrene eating away at the extremities, blackening fingers, toes, lips, and nose tip. Few lasted more than a few days, with some dying within half a day of the first symptoms’ manifestation.

34. Black Death Flavors

The bubonic plague was the most common form of the Black Death. However, the pandemic had two other unpleasant strains: the septicemic and pneumonic plagues. The differences were in the affected body parts. The bubonic plague hit the lymph nodes, the pneumonic targeted the lungs, while the septicemic infected the blood.

The septicemic plague was a blood infection that caused clotting in the veins. Victims suffered from abdominal pains, bleeding under the skin, blood pouring out of all orifices, vomiting of blood, fever, shortness of breath, and gangrene. The pneumonic plague struck the lungs, causing symptoms such as chest pains, shortness of breath, coughs, headaches, and high fevers. It could follow an initial bubonic or septicemic plague infection, felling those lucky enough to have survived one of the other plague strains, only for their luck to run out when they came down with the pneumonic plague. It could also be contracted from airborne particles exhaled by infected humans or cats.

33. The Recurring Plague

By 1352, the worst of the Black Death was over, and the pandemic had mostly burned itself out. Mostly, but not completely. Like a persistent ex turned crazy stalker, the Yersinia pestis bacterium kept coming back to wreak more havoc in subsequent decades. There were further outbreaks in 1361 to 1363, 1369 to 1371, 1374 to 1375, 1390, and 1400. None of the recurrences were as horrific as the original mid-century one, but they were still pretty bad: each time they hit, they killed about 10% to 20% of the population.

All in all, during the second half of the fourteenth century, the plague was introduced and reintroduced to Europe numerous times, arriving along the trade routes from China and Central Asia in multiple waves. Modern research suggests that climate fluctuations played a key role in those recurrences, as they affected populations of rats and other rodents infested with the plague-carrying fleas.

Read too: Thousands Died From the Black Death in 1666, Leaving Behind Haunted Plague Pits in London.

32. Weather Fluctuations and the Plague

Fourteenth-century weather fluctuations played a key role in the Black Death’s recurrences. The plague bacterium, Yersinia pestis, thrives on fleas that are usually hosted by ground rodents such as marmots – which don’t mingle with humans. However, bouts of bad weather in the 1300s struck those rodents’ habitats and decimated their populations. So their plague-infected fleas fled to alternate hosts such as rats – which do thrive amidst human populations.

A cycle developed, driven by weather fluctuations. Bad weather kills off the usual rodents – which don’t live amongst humans – that host the fleas that host Yersinia pestis. The fleas flee to rodents like rats that live among humans. A Black Death outbreak ensues. While killing humans, the infected fleas also wipe out their rat hosts, extinguishing the plague. Ten or fifteen years later, bad weather again decimates the usual rodents that typically host the plague-infected fleas. The fleas flee to rats, whose populations by then have recovered. The rats reintroduce the flea plagues to humans, and another Black Death outbreak occurs, lasting until the rats die off.

31. Immediate Consequences of the Black Death

The shock of a plague that wiped out up to two-thirds of the population was great, to say the least. Take the experience of the world’s reaction to the current crisis, and multiply it many times over, to get an idea of how contemporaries felt about and reacted to the Black Death. The economy contracted sharply, as trade came to a standstill, and wars came to a halt.

However, astonishing as it might seem to us today, medieval people soon adjusted to the Black Death, grew accustomed to the plague, and took its frequent recurrences in stride. The immediate reaction to the first and deadliest wave were only temporary: many died, but life went on for the survivors. Within a few years, trade had resumed, the economy picked up, and the survivors went back to waging wars and settling their disputes and differences by killing each other.

30. Long Term Consequences

The Black Death’s longer-term consequences revolved around the sudden impact of a significantly reduced population. In many parts of Europe, the land under cultivation shrank because many serfs and laborers had died. However, that often led to an increase in productivity in the land that was cultivated. With more land available than could be cultivated, people focused on cultivating the best agricultural lands, abandoning more marginal lands or turning them into pastures.

The shortage of labor was also a boon to surviving laborers. Faced with a labor scarcity, landowners and employers were forced to compete for workers by offering them better wages and working conditions. Those changes brought new fluidity to a hitherto rigidly stratified society. The land economy survived, but was weakened, as a new money economy – which ultimately replaced it – emerged. Psychologically, the shock of the Black Death caused more people to ask more questions to which the Catholic Church had few answers, which served to speed up and fuel the budding Renaissance. The world would never be the same.

29. The Justinian Plague Was Up There With the Black Death

The Black Death was history’s deadliest plague, but the Justinian Plague, 541 – 542 AD, gives it a run for its money in lethality and consequences. It was named after Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, during whose reign it occurred – and who came down with it, but survived. It is history’s first known recorded pandemic, because it swept across three continents, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Like the Black Death, the Justinian Plague was caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium. Also like the Black Death, the Justinian Plague struck with a devastating initial outbreak, followed by several recurrences in succeeding years. By the time the last recurrence ended and the Justinian Plague had died out, it had killed an estimated 25 million to 100 million people.

28. The Pandemic’s Spread

The strain of Yersinia pestis bacterium responsible for Justinian’s Plague is believed to have originated near the Tian Shan Mountains in Central Asia, near the border between China and Kyrgyzstan. Like the Black Death, Justinian’s Plague was mainly bubonic, felling its victims with all the bubonic plague’s horrors. The pandemic is believed to have first struck China and northern India, made its way via trade routes to the Great Lakes region of Africa, then down the Nile to Egypt.

Like the Black Death, Justinian’s Plague was transmitted by infected fleas carried by black rats. Egypt was the Byzantine Empire’s granary, and from its seaports, ships laden with grain – and also rats hosting infected fleas – sailed across the Mediterranean. From Egypt, the plague rapidly spread to the rest of the Middle East, the Eastern Mediterranean, and Constantinople, which served as both capitol and commercial center for the Byzantine Empire. From Constantinople, the pandemic rapidly spread through the rest of Europe.

27. The Justinian Pandemic’s Consequences

Europe was hard hit by the Justinian Plague, losing an estimated 40% to 50% of its population. However, the pandemic followed the established trade routes, so ports and cities were especially hard hit. The countryside and the parts of Europe off the established trade routes got off relatively lightly.

That lopsided death toll, heavy in the cities and relatively light in the countryside, marked a transitional point for Europe, ending what was left of the Classical Age, and ushering in the Feudal Era. The Classical Age had been marked by a significant urban culture. Justinian’s Plague – on top of Justinian’s many wars – put paid to that, devastating the cities and an economy built around sustaining urban life. The center of power shifted from the cities to the countryside, and rural strong men emerged as the founders of feudalism. One era and way of life ended, and another one began.

26. The Hyperactive Mount Kelut

Mount Kelut is one of the most active volcanoes on the island of Java, in today’s Indonesia. During the past millennium, it erupted more than 30 times. In just the 20^th century, it went off four times, and its latest eruption occurred as recently as 2014. Throughout most of its history, Kelut had a massive crater, which filled with rainwater to form a beautiful lake.

The lake was an attractive vacation destination, but during eruptions, the lake’s waters frequently led to devastating mud flows, or lahars. In 2007, seeping lava piled into a big mound at the center of the crater, which displaced most of the lake’s water.

25. One of the World’s Most Dangerous Volcanoes

Mount Kelut is one of the most dangerous volcanoes, not only in Java, but in the entire world. Not because of massive eruptions – Kelud’s explosions are not as energetic as some historically powerful eruptions, such as Tambora or Krakatoa.

The danger is caused by just how often the restless volcano keeps going off. The danger of Kelut’s frequent eruptions is made even worse by its tendency to produce deadly mud flows, because of the presence of massive amounts of water in the volcano’s crater.

24. Deadly Lahars

In 1586, an eruption emptied Mount Kelut’s crater lake, resulting in devastating lahars, or mud flows. By the time things quieted down, about 10,000 people had been killed. Kelut then behaved itself without major eruptions and significant devastation for over three centuries, during which the volcano’s crater refilled with water and turned into a crater lake.

That period of relative peace ended on May 19^th, 1919, when Kelut exploded yet once again, in another devastating eruption. An estimated 38 million cubic meters of boiling water and steam blew up from Kelut’s crater lake, and caused massive flows of hot mud, or lahars. The mud traveled for about 30 miles, destroying about 100 villages in its path. By the time it stopped, an estimated 5100 people had been killed.

23. Trying to Contain Kelut

The colonial government of the Dutch East Indies responded by creating a volcanological authority to study and warn about future eruptions. It also launched an ambitious engineering project to avert future devastation. The authorities created a drainage system for Mount Kelut’s crater lake, to manage the hazards and potential future mud flows, in case of another eruption. Drainage tunnels were dug, which reduced the crater lake’s water level by about 150 feet, and they proved highly effective. The next time Mount Kelut erupted, which happened in 1951, there was too little water in the crater lake to form massive flood flows, thus averting what would have been another Kelut disaster.

The drainage tunnels were destroyed in that 1951 eruption, however, and were not immediately rebuilt. When Kelut erupted again, in 1966, the crater lake had refilled and contained over 50 million cubic meters of water. In the resultant lahars, over 200 people were killed by the mud flows. The Indonesian authorities responded by digging a new, and deeper tunnel, which reduced the crater lake’s volume to only 1 million cubic meters of water.

22. The “Minor” Eruption That Killed Tens of Thousands

Colombia’s Nevado del Ruiz, located about 75 miles northwest of Bogota, is a typical stratovolcano. Those are made of multiple layers, or strata, of hardened lava, pumice (volcanic debris), tephra (dust), and ash. What is atypical about Nevado del Ruiz is that it is located by a river valley, which makes its eruptions produce flows known as “lahars”. Those are mud flows made of a slurry of volcanic debris, rocks, and water.

The lahar flows are particularly powerful in Nevado del Rio’s case because it is located high up in the Andes, and its top is covered with a glacier. That is, a lot of frozen water just waiting to come down in an eruption as an avalanche and flow of snow, melted water, and debris. On November 13^th, 1985, after lying dormant for seven decades, Nevado del Ruiz awoke from its slumber and became active. It was a minor eruption, far as volcanoes go, but it produced a massive and massively devastating lahar. Tens of thousands died in the ensuing disaster.

21. The Armero Tragedy

As lava erupted from Nevado del Ruiz, it melted the mountain’s glaciers, turning them into torrents of water. The result was four huge lahars of mudslides, landslides, and volcanic debris, racing down the mountainside at 30 miles an hour, and picking up speed as they reached and were channeled into mountain gullies.

The mud and debris flow struck nearby settlements, causing particular devastation in the town of Armero. There, about 20,000 of the town’s 29,000 population were killed in what came to be known as the Armero tragedy. Thousands more died in nearby towns and villages. The haunting images of one victim, in particular, 13-year-old Omayara Sanchez and the fight to save her life, circulated around the world and was televised live. She was trapped in the mud and debris for days as rescuers frantically tried to free her, before she died of exposure on live TV.

20. An Easily Avoidable Disaster That Wasn’t

The Nevado del Ruiz Eruption killed about 25,000 people. That made it the 20^th century’s second deadliest volcanic eruption, exceeded only by that of Mount Pelee. Sadly, the massive casualties could have easily been avoided: volcanologists had detected clear signs of an impending eruption two months before it happened, and warned the authorities of the impending disaster.

The location of Nevado del Ruiz by a river valley made the risk of lahars obvious. That, coupled with the glaciers atop the volcano which would supercharge such lahars in case of an eruption, made the dangers to Armero and its surroundings even clearer. Volcanologists and seismologists from multiple organizations warned the Colombian government to evacuate Armero, but were ignored.

Read More: 10 Worst Volcanic Eruptions of the 20th Century.

19. A Religious Festival Interrupted by Calamity

Lisbon was celebrating All Saints Day on the morning of November 1^st, 1755, when the festivities were cut short, just as they began, by a natural disaster. At the time, the Portuguese capitol was one of Europe’s wealthiest cities and busiest seaports. It was almost totally demolished by a powerful earthquake, with a magnitude of about a 9.0 on the Richter Scale. The shocks were felt as far away as Finland, North Africa, and the Caribbean.

Striking around 9:40 AM, the Lisbon Earthquake caused fissures nearly 20 feet deep to open in the city’s streets. Because of the religious festival, a significant percentage of the population were gathered in churches and cathedrals when the tremors began. Thousands were crushed to death as the houses of worship collapsed atop them. As the tremors subsided, another danger arose when fires erupted around the city, first individually, then joining together until most of Lisbon was a giant inferno.

18. Prayers for God’s Mercy Were… Not Answered

The shaken and terrified survivors of the Lisbon Earthquake sought to escape the conflagration and collapsing buildings by rushing toward the harbor district. There, the large open squares of the royal palace promised safety from both flames and falling debris. Once they got there, the good people of Lisbon were further alarmed when they encountered the incongruous sight: a harbor without water, with ships resting on a dried seabed.

Gathering in the drying silt of the harbor’s bottom, they were led by priests in fervent prayers. They begged God’s mercy and forgiveness of whatever sins had occasioned such divine wrath. Many were still praying and beseeching God’s mercy in the harbor when the sea returned with a vengeance in the form of a tsunami, with a wall of water 40 feet high, and drowned them.

17. Dear God, Why?

The Lisbon Earthquake killed about 60,000 people in the city. Total deaths in the region as a whole are estimated to have been around 100,000 or more, plus many more injured. The calamity occurred as the Enlightenment was getting into full swing, and inspired significant philosophical discourse and exchanges that furthered the development of theodicy, or the question of how a just and good God could allow what happened in Lisbon to take place.

The thorniest theodicy question was why God had sent an earthquake to crush His worshipers by the thousands in cathedrals and churches as they gathered in prayer to celebrate All Saints Day and glorify His name. The question was compounded and made thornier yet by His subsequent sending of a tsunami to drown the survivors who had been praying for His mercy in Lisbon’s harbor.

16. Antiquity’s Most Famous Disaster

Mount Vesuvius’ eruption around noon on August 24^th, 79 AD, was antiquity’s most famous disaster, and one of Europe’s most powerful volcanic explosions. Vesuvius blew its top with a force 100,000 times greater than that of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, and the eruption tossed deadly debris mixed with a cloud of poisonous gasses over 20 miles up into the air. As it spewed gasses into the air, lava and hot pumice poured out of the volcano’s mouth at a rate of 1.5 million tons per second. It raced down Vesuvius’ side to devastate the surrounding region and destroy nearby towns, of which Pompeii and Herculaneum are the best known.

Pliny the Younger, a Roman author and magistrate, was 15 miles away at Cape Misenum, visiting his uncle, Pliny the Elder – a Roman admiral who would lose his life during rescue efforts. History is deeply indebted to Pliny’s detailed description of the events he saw and those told him by first-hand witnesses, which provide the best written and most thorough narrative of the event.

15. Turning Towns Into Ovens

Mount Vesuvius had experienced tremors for days in August of 79 AD, but they were not unusual. Then, around noon on August 24^th, a cloud appeared atop Vesuvius. About an hour later, the volcano erupted and ash began to fall on Pompeii, 6 miles away. By 2 PM, pumice, or volcanic debris, began to fall with the ash. At 5 PM, sunlight had been completely blocked and roofs in Pompeii began collapsing under the accumulating weight of ash and pumice. Panicked townspeople rushed to the harbor seeking any ship that would take them away.

By midnight, the volcano was spewing a hot deadly column over 20 miles up into the air. Simultaneously, lava flowed down its side in six major surges, as Vesuvius vomited molten rock in a rapid flow that incinerated all that it encountered. The lava did not reach Pompeii or Herculaneum, but it sent heat waves of more than 550 degrees Fahrenheit into those towns, turning them into ovens and killing any who had not yet escaped or had not already suffocated from the fine ash.

14. A Calamity for Contemporaries, a Blessing for Historians

About 1500 bodies were found in Pompeii and Herculaneum when they were unearthed centuries later. They were recovered from but a small area that was impacted by the volcano’s eruption, and extrapolating to the surrounding regions, total casualties are estimated to have been in the tens of thousands.

The towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, whose populations at the time numbered about 20,000, were buried beneath up to 20 feet of volcanic ash and pumice. Tragic and terrifying as that was, the ash deposits did a remarkably effective job of preserving those towns nearly entire. That afforded future historians and scholars an unrivaled snapshot of 1^st century AD Roman architecture, city planning, urban infrastructure, and town life in general.

Related:

• 10 People from Pompeii and Herculaneum Whose Lives Can Be Revived
• Things You Didn’t Know About the Tragic Town of Pompeii and the Volcanic Eruption That Destroyed It

13. Unlucky Coringa

Few cities have been as unlucky as Coringa, India. Until 1839, it was a bustling Bay of Bengal port city, near the mouth of the Godavari River on India’s east coast. It had a population numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and a harbor that hosted thousands of ships annually, busily loading and unloading goods and produce.

Today, Coringa is a tiny village near the coast, of no distinction or note, and with a population of no more than a few thousand. The drastic decline in fortunes was caused by a pair of devastating cyclones, one in 1789, and an even more destructive one fifty years later, in 1839.

12. Coringa’s First Disaster

After centuries of prosperity, Coringa’s fortunes took a hit in 1789. In December of that, a storm that came to be called The Great Coringa Cyclone developed in the Bay of Bengal – fairly late in the cyclone season. It produced severe storm-tide conditions, and witnesses described a succession of three giant waves striking Coringa. The first storm tide drove ashore all the ships in anchorage. The second and third waves, even bigger than the first, flowed inland to inundate with salt water the fertile fields of the Godavari River’s delta. Coringa was almost completely destroyed, and around 20,000 people were killed.

Naming the 1789 disaster “The Great Coringa Cyclone” was akin to those who named the 1914 – 1918 global war “The Great War”, little knowing that an even greater calamity would soon follow. Those who named the 1789 storm did not suspect that an even bigger and far more devastating cyclone would strike Coringa within a lifetime.

11. Coringa’s Second Calamity

By 1839, half a century after “The Great Coringa Cyclone”, the city had recovered from the 1789 disaster, rebuilt, and was more prosperous, populous, and bustling than ever. Then, on November 25^th, 1839, again unusually late in the Bay of Bengal’s cyclone season, a monstrous cyclone struck Coringa, and brought with it a 40-foot storm surge. The extensive damage of the earlier 1789 cyclone paled in comparison to this one, which wholly destroyed the city of Coringa, wrecked all ships in the harbor and carried their wreckage miles inland, and killed over 300,000 people.

This time the damage was so extensive that the few survivors made no effort to rebuild. Most upped stakes and scattered to pursue their lives elsewhere, putting distance between themselves and what was thought to be a cursed city. The few who remained, some of whom were old enough to have experienced both devastating cyclones during their lifetimes, abandoned the coast altogether and rebuilt their community miles inland.

10. The Lethal Farting Volcano

The 1783 Laki Eruption was not exactly one of history’s most powerful volcanic events. It was not a massive and violent eruption like Vesuvius or Krakatoa or Tambora. It did not look anything like what most people imagine when picturing a volcano going off with a bang, blowing its top, and releasing a massive amount of energy in a dramatic explosion. There were no fires reaching to the heavens, or rivers of lava rushing down the volcano’s sides.

Indeed, the Laki Eruption was not even a single explosive event. Instead, it was eight months of rumblings, interspersed by relatively small eruptions from time to time, with lava slowly seeping out of the side every now and then, while the volcano steadily spewed sulfuric dioxide gasses. Laki was not a vigorous and energetic volcano, but a tired and lazy one, steadily farting gasses for months before it finally subsided and went quiet. Nonetheless, Laki was the deadliest volcanic eruption in human history.

9. Wiping Out a Fourth of Iceland’s Population

The Laki Eruption’s deadliness was a result of its steady gas releases during its eight months of rumbling and periodic small explosions. Massive amounts of gasses, including fluorine and over 120 million tons of sundry sulfuric dioxides, were released into the air. They produced fog and haze as far away as Syria. The fluorine settled on Iceland’s grass, which gave grazing animals fluoride poisoning and killed most of the island’s livestock. The loss of livestock in turn caused a quarter of Iceland’s human population to starve to death.

But Iceland was and remains sparsely populated, so the death of a quarter of its population did not make Laki history’s deadliest eruption. The impact was beyond Iceland, where the eruption led to a decline in temperatures in the northern hemisphere. Winter temperatures in the US, for example, dropped 10 degrees Fahrenheit in 1783, and remained below normal for several years afterward. Laki’s deadliest impact was not in the US or North America, either, however.

8. History’s Deadliest Volcano

The Laki Eruption’s deadliest impact was in Europe and the northern hemisphere southeast of Iceland. The summer of 1783 had been a particularly hot one, and a rare high-pressure zone formed over Iceland that year, which caused winds to blow to the southeast. Thus, when Laki began spewing prodigious amounts of sulfuric dioxide into the sky, they were carried by the winds from Iceland in a southeasterly direction.

Wherever those winds arrived, they brought misery with them. Laki’s gasses caused crop failures in Europe, drought in North Africa and India, Japan’s worst famine, as well as a historic famine in Egypt, a sixth of whose population starved to death in 1784. It is estimated that the Laki Eruption and its aftermath caused the deaths of an estimated six million people, making it the deadliest volcanic eruption in human history. It also illustrated how low energy but large volume eruptions over an extended period can have a greater impact than massive explosive eruptions.

7. An Earthquake That Almost Killed an Emperor

The city of Antioch in the Roman province of Syria, modern Antakya in Turkey, was rocked by an extremely intense earthquake on December 13^th, 115 AD. The upheaval caused widespread devastation and high loss of life in the region, destroying not only Antioch, but also the nearby city of Apamea, and inflicting significant damage upon Beirut as well.

The tremors also triggered a tsunami that slammed into the eastern Mediterranean coast. It caused extensive damage as far south as the seaport of Caesarea in the Roman province of Palestine, whose harbor was wrecked by the wall of water. It is estimated that about 260,000 people lost their lives, with many more injured and/or made homeless. Emperor Trajan was in the city at the time, and he barely survived the disaster.

6. A Prosperous City in an Unfortunate Location

In 115 AD, Antioch was a flourishing and economically vibrant Greco-Roman city on the Orontes River. It was the Roman Empire’s third-biggest metropolis after Rome and Alexandria. The city owed its success to its location at the closest terminus of the Persian Royal Road, which linked the Mediterranean with Mesopotamia and Persia.

That made Antioch a trading center and entrepot for goods between the Roman and Persian worlds. Unfortunately, Antioch’s location had the misfortune of being near the junction of three tectonic plates – the African, Anatolian, and Arabian – whose friction made the region particularly susceptible to large earthquakes.

5. Tossing People and Trees in the Air Like Water Drops Shaken Off a Wet Dog

As described by the Roman historian Cassius Dio, the Antioch Earthquake was preceded by a loud and bellowing roar. Then the ground started to violently vibrate and shake, tossing people and entire trees up into the air as if they were water drops shaken off a wet dog’s fur.

Entire buildings were lifted off the ground, then violently slammed back to earth. Many were killed or injured by falling debris, and many more by buildings collapsing atop and burying them. The aftershocks, which continued for days, killed and injured many of those who had survived the first day’s tremors.

4. Two Emperors Caught a Lucky Break

When the earthquake struck Antioch, the Roman emperor Trajan and his chief deputy and successor, the future emperor Hadrian, were wintering in the city, overseeing preparations for a military campaign against Parthia. Because Antioch served as headquarters for the war against Parthia, the city and the surrounding region were even more crowded than usual. The presence of legions encamped nearby, as well as the camp followers and other civilians engaged in support activities for the Roman army, swelled Antioch’s population.

Trajan managed to escape via a window from the building in which he had been housed, and was fortunate to suffer only light injuries. As buildings and debris kept falling due to aftershocks, the emperor and his entourage relocated to the open hippodrome, or race track, where they erected tents and set up house. His deputy Hadrian also escaped with only slight injuries. Both oversaw the recovery and rebuilding process, which was begun by Trajan, and after his death in 117, was continued and completed by his successor, Hadrian.

3. The Calamity Behind the Legend of Atlantis

Sometime between 1642 – 1540 BC, Santorini in today’s Greece experienced one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in recorded history. It was about four times as powerful as the gigantic Krakatoa eruption of 1883. The explosion sundered the island of Thera, and wiped out the flourishing Minoan settlement of nearby Akrotiri and surrounding islands.

Known as the Minoan Eruption of Thera, the event gave rise to the legend of the vanished civilization of Atlantis, which was doomed by a natural catastrophe and swallowed by the sea. Beyond legend, however, the Minoan Eruption was one of history’s most impactful natural disasters, with consequences not only to its own era, but with knock-on effects and a chain of causation leading directly to the world in which we live today.

2. Destroying a Civilization

In addition to the immediate devastation of Thera and surrounding islands, the Minoan Eruption produced powerful tsunamis. They struck and devastated Crete, contributing to the decline of its Minoan civilization, and paving the way for its extinction. The Minoans were the Mediterranean’s greatest naval power, as well as the dominant power of the Aegean, including what became Greece and the Greek world.

A trading power, the Minoans were oriented towards Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean, and were strongly influenced by those civilizations. While the Minoans flourished, the Aegean world in their thrall was by necessity oriented in the same direction, and strongly influenced by the Egyptian and eastern civilizations as well.

1. History’s Most Impactful Calamity?

The Minoan Eruption weakened Crete and its Minoan civilization sufficiently to create a power vacuum in the Aegean. The emerging Mycenaeans filled it in mainland Greece. They went on to conquer Crete and destroy the Minoans, and became the dominant power of the Aegean. However, unlike the Minoans, the Mycenaeans’ energies were focused not on trade with Egypt and the Levant, but on colonizing the Aegean, the western coast of Asia Minor, the Black Sea coast, and the western Mediterranean.

That change of orientation significantly reduced Egyptian and eastern influences upon the Greeks, and the trajectory of their civilization when it flourished centuries later, long after the Mycenaeans had themselves disappeared. The Greeks ended up with civilization and culture distinct from Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean, rather than becoming an extension and outpost of those civilizations. That had knock-on effects on western civilization, which is founded upon that of the ancient Greeks. An argument could be made that today’s western civilization and its impact on the modern world would not exist but for the Minoan Eruption of the second millennium BC.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Ancient History Encyclopedia – Justinian’s Plague (541-542 CE)

Brewminate – The Antioch Earthquake in 115 CE

Cantor, Norman F. – In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World it Made (2001)

Centers for Disease Control – Plague Transmission

Crawford, Dorothy – Deadly Companions: How Microbes Shaped Our History (2018)

Earth Magazine – Benchmarks: November 13, 1985: Nevado del Ruiz Eruption Triggers Deadly Lahars

Encyclopedia Britannica – Black Death

Encyclopedia Britannica – Lisbon Earthquake of 1755

Encyclopedia Britannica – Mount Kelud

Friedrich, Walter L. – Fire in the Sea: The Santorini Volcano: Natural History and the Legend of Atlantis (2000)

Hurricane Science – 1839 Coringa Cyclone

Live Science – Mount Vesuvius & Pompeii: Facts & History

History Collection – Hell on Earth: 12 of History’s Most Destructive Natural Disasters

Listverse – 10 Scary Facts About the Justinian Plague

McNeil, William H. – Plagues and People (1976)

Medievalists Net – Yersinia Pestis and the Plague of Justinian 541-543 AD: A Genomic Analysis

National Geographic Magazine, September, 2007 – Vesuvius: Asleep For Now

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History Global Volcanism Program – Kelut

Wikipedia – Armero Tragedy

Wikipedia – Black Death

Wikipedia – Minoan Eruption

Wired – Local and Global Impacts of the 1783-84 Laki Eruption in Iceland