The worst years to be alive in the 19th century
The 1800s gave the world railroads, the telegraph, and anesthesia. They also gave it a handful of years that people who lived through them never forgot.
Five below, each one a different kind of bad.
1816: Snow in June
A volcano in Indonesia erupted in 1815, and a year later New England paid for it. Six inches of snow fell on June 6, and it was 18 inches deep in Cabot, Vermont, two days later. Crops failed, prices spiked, farmers headed west, and across the Atlantic, Mary Shelley spent a gloomy stretch indoors by Lake Geneva writing Frankenstein.
Why do historians call 1847 “Black ’47”?
Because it was the worst year of the Irish Great Famine, which ran from 1845 to 1852. Roughly a million people died and more than a million emigrated, and the island’s population fell by 20 to 25 percent between 1841 and 1871. A potato blight started it, and absentee landlords and a single-crop economy made it far worse.
1871 had two fires on the same night, and only one became famous
The Great Chicago Fire gets the history lessons. The Peshtigo fire, the same night in Wisconsin, is the deadliest wildfire in recorded history, with 1,152 verified deaths and between 1.2 and 1.5 million acres burned. Chicago lost about 250 people, and Peshtigo’s toll was more than four times that.
3,000 miles
That’s roughly how far away people were when they heard the explosion when Krakatoa erupted in August 1883. The eruption and the tsunamis it triggered cost more than 36,000 lives, and its ash painted sunsets around the world for months.
1893: The year the railroads went first
A run of railroad failures set off the Panic of 1893, and hundreds of banks and thousands of businesses went under in the depression that followed. The next spring, Jacob Coxey led an army of unemployed men from Ohio toward Washington to demand relief.
The bottom line
Volcanoes, famine, fire, and a bank run: every one of these years hit a different part of ordinary life. Which was worst depends on where you happened to be standing.
Ask us! What questions do you have about content, strategy, pop culture, lifestyle, wellness, history or more? We may use your question in an upcoming article!
Related:
- Historical “discoveries” that turned out to be elaborate hoaxes
- Some of the most surprising record deals in music history
Like MediaFeed’s content? Be sure to follow us.
