By John Kleiner
100—9:45 AM, August 28, 2007, 11th hole of Odana Hills Golf Course, Madison, Wisconsin. Lightning strikes Francis Adams, killing him instantly. “It’s maybe a wake-up call, a sad reminder that lightning really is something you don’t want to goof around with,” notes Ray Shane of the Madison Parks Department.
101—12:30 PM, January 15, 1919, 529 Commercial Street, Boston. A 58-foot cast-iron tank at the Purity Distilling Company bursts open, releasing 2.3 million gallons of molasses. A wave of syrupy goo, estimated at between eight and 40 feet tall, sweeps an elevated train from its tracks, demolishes several buildings, and tosses a truck into Boston Harbor. Twenty-one people drown.
102—April 22, 1848, Victoria Strait near King William Island in the Canadian Arctic. The crews of the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus abandon their ships, which have been frozen into the ice pack for nearly two years. The men have been searching, fruitlessly, for a Northwest Passage since 1845. All 128 perish somewhere out on the ice. There are rumors, gathered from Inuits who claim to have encountered the survivors, that the group resorted to cannibalism.
103—August 21, 1986, Lake Nyos, Cameroon. 1.8 million tons of dissolved carbon dioxide is suddenly released from the lake in one gigantic burp. The gas, which is 1.5 times heavier than air, pours into neighboring valleys, where it suffocates livestock and people, many of them in their sleep. Joseph Nkwain, a survivor from the village of Subum, recalls his awakening: “I was surprised to see that my trousers were red, had some stains like honey. I saw some starchy mess on my body. My arms had some wounds. I didn’t really know how I got these wounds. I opened the door. I wanted to speak, my breath would not come out.” The death toll reaches 1,700.
104—September 19, 1788, Carensebes¸, Romania. Austrian hussars preparing to fight the Ottomans cross the Timis bridge, where they encounter Wallachian peasants selling schnapps. Some hours later the infantry arrive, also wanting liquor, only to be repulsed by the inebriated hussars. In the confusion, cries of “Halt! Halt!” are misinterpreted as “Allah! Allah!” leading to a generalized impression that the Ottomans are attacking. By daybreak, 10,000 Austrian troops have killed one another. Emperor Joseph II is dispirited. He writes to his brother, “I know not how to continue. I have lost my sleep and spend the night with dark thoughts.”
105—10:24, November 1, 1755, Lisbon. An earthquake estimated at nine on the Richter scale shakes the city for six minutes, toppling most of it. Fifteen-foot fissures run through the center of town. Crowds gather at the harbor, where the water level has mysteriously receded. When, subsequently, a tsunami strikes, most of the bystanders are swept out to sea. Fire follows. Up to 100,000 people die in Lisbon and coastal areas of Morocco.
106—1845-48, Ireland. The Irish Potato Famine, sometimes referred as the Great Famine, the Great Hunger, or the Bad Life, follows the arrival in Connemara of Phytophthora infestans, commonly known as late blight, in October 1845. The fungus, imported to Europe from the United States in a shipment of seed potatoes bound for Belgium, wipes out the crop on which a third of the population depends. Around a million Irish starve to death. In his book The Irish Crisis, published in 1848, Charles Trevelyan, the treasury secretary who directed the English relief effort, describes the famine as “a direct stroke of an all-wise and all-merciful Providence.”
107—1959, People’s Republic of China. Chairman Mao Zedong announces the Great Leap Forward or, 大躍進 in Chinese,. He proclaims that China will overtake Britain in production of steel and other products within 15 years. A year later, Mao radically revises the time line—now, what was to be accomplished in 15 years is to be accomplished in just one. In the great rush of enthusiasm—or fear—agricultural workers devote themselves to building backyard furnaces. In many parts of the country, grain rots in the field. Fictional surpluses are sold abroad. By the spring of 1959, the Chinese are starving. Some 30 million die of famine; another 500,000 are executed.
108—2 AM, October 12, 1492, the New World. Seeing the Taíno for the first time, Christopher Columbus is struck by their good looks. Writing in his log, he notes, “All of those whom I saw were young men—for I saw no one of an age greater than 30 years—very well made, with very handsome and beautiful bodies and very pleasant features… They do not bear arms, nor do they know them, for I showed them swords, and out of ignorance, they took them by the edge and cut themselves.” In the course of European colonization, some 100 million natives perish, and the population of the Americas falls by as much as 98 percent. It is mainly the new diseases, small pox and measles, that make the genocide possible.
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