Was 2020 The Worst Year Ever? Historians Weigh In

So, just to recap, the following events occurred in 2020:

– The coronavirus pandemic swept the globe, killing more than 1.7 million people (so far), including more than 337,000 (so far) in the United States.

– The president of the United States was tried and acquitted, after being impeached at the end of 2019.

– Protests stemming from several police killings of unarmed Black Americans erupted throughout the country, including just outside the White House, where federal law enforcement officers used tear gas on U.S. citizens.

– Wildfires devastated the U.S. West Coast and Australia.

– The president of the United States contracted the coronavirus.

– Kobe Bryant and his 13-year-old daughter died in a helicopter crash.

– The president of the United States disputed the results of a peaceful election.

But historians say the worst year in world history wasn’t even a close contest.

It was 1348, the height of the Black Death, during which as many as 200 million people died. That would be like wiping out about 65% of the U.S. population. The Holocaust in 1944 ranked second, followed by 1816, when a volcano eruption in Indonesia blocked out the sun, starving millions. 2020 ranked sixth.

In U.S. history, 2020 was well down the list at No. 8, just behind the 2001 terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the tumult of 1968’s riots and assassinations, the 1918 flu pandemic, the Trail of Tears of 1838, the 1929 stock market crash marking the beginning of the Great Depression, and at the very, very top, 1862.

That was, most historians say, the grimmest year of the Civil War, when the country’s total collapse seemed imminent.

Read more at The Hour.

{Matzav.com}