The most powerful disasters in the world. Tragedies of the 20th century (143 photos). The worst man-made disaster
Below is a list of the ten largest natural disasters in human history. The rating is based on the number of deaths.
Earthquake in Aleppo
Death toll: about 230,000
The ranking of the largest natural disasters in human history opens with the Aleppo earthquake of magnitude 8.5 on the Richter scale, which occurred in several stages near the city of Aleppo in northern Syria on October 11, 1138. It is often cited as the fourth-deadliest earthquake in history. According to the Damascus chronicler Ibn al-Qalanisi, approximately 230,000 people died as a result of this disaster.
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
Number of victims: 225,000–300,000
An underwater earthquake that occurred on December 26, 2004 in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of North Sumatra, 250 kilometers southeast of the city of Banda Aceh. Considered one of the strongest earthquakes of the 20th–21st centuries. Its magnitude, according to various estimates, ranged from 9.1 to 9.3 on the Richter scale. Occurring at a depth of about 30 km, the earthquake caused a series of destructive tsunamis, the height of which exceeded 15 meters. These waves caused enormous destruction and took the lives of, according to various estimates, from 225 thousand to 300 thousand people in 14 countries. The coasts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand were hit the hardest by the tsunami.
Death toll: 171,000–230,000
Banqiao Dam is a dam on the Zhuhe River, Henan Province, China. On August 8, 1975, due to the powerful Typhoon Nina, the dam was destroyed, thereby causing flooding and a huge wave 10 km wide and 3–7 meters high. This disaster, according to various estimates, claimed the lives of from 171,000 to 230,000 people, of whom about 26,000 died directly from the flood. The rest died from subsequent epidemics and famine. In addition, 11 million people lost their homes.
Number of victims: 242,419
The Tangshan earthquake, measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale, is the deadliest earthquake of the 20th century. It happened on July 28, 1976 in the Chinese city of Tangshan at 3:42 local time. Its hypocenter was located near the millionaire industrial city at a depth of 22 km. The 7.1 aftershocks caused even more damage. According to the Chinese government, the number of victims was 242,419 people, but according to other sources, about 800,000 inhabitants died, and another 164,000 were seriously injured. The earthquake also affected populated areas located 150 kilometers from the epicenter, including Tianjin and Beijing. More than 5,000,000 houses were completely destroyed.
Flood in Kaifeng
Death toll: 300,000–378,000
The Kaifeng flood is a man-made disaster that primarily struck Kaifeng. This city is located on the southern bank of the Yellow River in the Chinese province of Henan. In 1642, the city was flooded by the Yellow River after the Ming Dynasty army opened the dams to prevent the advance of Li Zicheng's troops. Then the flood and subsequent famine and plague killed about 300,000–378,000 people.
Indian Cyclone – 1839
Death toll: over 300,000
Fifth place in the ranking of the largest natural disasters in history is occupied by the Indian cyclone of 1839. On November 16, 1839, a 12-meter wave caused by a powerful storm completely destroyed the large port city of Coringa, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. More than 300,000 people died then. After the disaster, the city was never rebuilt. Nowadays in its place there is a small village with a population (2011) of 12,495 inhabitants.
Death toll: approximately 830,000
This earthquake, measuring approximately 8.0 magnitude, occurred on January 23, 1556, in the Shaanxi province of China, during the Ming Dynasty. More than 97 districts were affected by it, everything was destroyed in an area of 840 km, and in some areas 60% of the population died. In total, the China earthquake killed approximately 830,000 people, more than any other earthquake in human history. The huge number of victims is due to the fact that the majority of the population of the province lived in loess caves, which were destroyed or flooded by mudflows immediately after the first tremors.
Number of victims: 300,000–500,000
the most destructive tropical cyclone in history, which struck the territories of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and the Indian state of West Bengal on November 12, 1970. It killed an estimated 300,000–500,000 people, mostly as a result of a 9m high surge that swamped many low-lying islands in the Ganges delta. The sub-districts of Thani and Tazumuddin were the hardest hit by the cyclone, killing more than 45% of the population.
Death toll: about 900,000
This devastating flood occurred on September 28, 1887 in Henan Province, China. The torrential rains that fell here for many days were to blame. Due to the rains, the water level in the Yellow River rose and destroyed a dam near the city of Zhengzhou. The water quickly spread throughout northern China, covering an area of approximately 130,000 square meters. km, taking the lives of about 900 thousand people, and leaving approximately 2 million homeless.
Number of victims: 145,000–4,000,000
The world's largest natural disaster is the Chinese flood, or more precisely a series of floods that occurred in 1931 in South-Central China. This disaster was preceded by a drought that lasted from 1928 to 1930. However, the following winter was very snowy, there was a lot of rain in the spring, and during the summer months, the country suffered from heavy rains. All these facts contributed to the fact that the three largest rivers in China: the Yangtze, Huaihe, and Yellow River overflowed their banks, taking the lives of, according to various sources, from 145 thousand to 4 million people. Also, the largest natural disaster in history caused epidemics of cholera and typhoid, and also led to famine, during which cases of infanticide and cannibalism were recorded.
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From television screens, from radios, from newspapers, from endless news releases, we learn about tragedies, accidents and all sorts of things. Let's look at the worst disasters in the world.
The worst plane crash
The rating of “The worst plane crashes” is headed by Tenerife. The fatal collision of 2 Boeing-747 aircraft belonging to different companies (Boeing-747-206B - the brainchild of KLM airline, operated the next flight KL4805 and Boeing-747 - property of Pan American, operated flight 1736), happened on 03/27/1977 on the island of the Canary group , Tenerife, on the runway of Los Rodeo airport. Many people died - 583 people on these two planes. What exactly caused such a devastating accident? The paradox is that the superposition of unfavorable circumstances on top of each other played a cruel joke.
On that ill-fated Sunday spring day, Los Rodeos airport was very congested. Both aircraft performed maneuvers on the narrow runway, including complex turns of 135-180 degrees. Interference in radio communications with the controller and between the pilots, poor weather conditions and visibility, misinterpretation of commands by the air traffic controller, the strong Spanish accent of the controller - all this inevitably led to trouble. The Boeing KLM commander did not understand the dispatcher's command to abort the takeoff, while the commander of the second Boeing reported that their huge plane was still moving along the runway. Fourteen seconds later, the inevitable collision occurred, the fuselage of the Pan American Boeing was very damaged, gaps formed in some places, and some passengers escaped through them. A Boeing KLM without a tail and with damaged wings fell onto the runway 150 meters from the point of collision and drove along the runway for another 300 meters. Both affected aircraft burst into flames.
All 248 people on the Boeing KLM plane were killed. The second plane killed 326 passengers and nine crew members. The American star of Playboy magazine, actress and model Eve Meyer, also died in this worst plane crash.
The worst man-made disaster
The worst disaster in the history of oil production was the explosion on the Piper Alpha oil platform, built in 1976. This happened on 07/06/1988. According to experts, this terrible accident cost 3.4 billion US dollars and claimed the lives of 167 people. Piper Alpha is the only burned-out oil production platform on Earth, owned by the American oil company Occidental Petroleum. There was a huge gas leak and, as a result, a colossal explosion. This happened as a result of ill-considered actions of the maintenance personnel - pipelines from the platform fed the general oil pipeline network, the supply of petroleum products was not stopped immediately after the disaster, awaiting the command of higher authorities. Therefore, the fire continued due to the burning of gas and oil in the pipes; the fire even engulfed residential complexes. And those who were able to survive the first explosion found themselves surrounded by flames. Those who jumped into the water were saved.
The worst disaster on the water
If you remember the biggest disasters on the water, you immediately remember the pictures from the film “Titanic”, which is based on real events of 1912. But the sinking of the Titanic is not the biggest disaster. The greatest maritime disaster was the sinking of the German motor ship Wilhelm Gustlow by a Soviet military submarine on January 30, 1945. There were almost 9 thousand people on board the ship: 3,700 of them were people who had completed elite training as military submariners, 3-4 thousand representatives of the military elite who were evacuated from Danzig. The tourist excursion ship was built in 1938. It was, as it seemed, an unsinkable 9-deck ocean liner, designed using the latest technologies of that time.
Dance floors, 2 theaters, swimming pools, a church, a gym, restaurants, a cafe with a winter garden and climate control, comfortable cabins and personal apartments of Hitler himself. 208 meters long, it could travel halfway around the world without refueling. It couldn't sink a priori. But fate decreed otherwise. Under the command of A.I. Marinesko, the crew of the Soviet submarine S-13 conducted a military operation to destroy the enemy ship. Three fired torpedoes penetrated the Wilhelm Gustlow. It immediately sank in the Baltic Sea. Until now, no one, the whole world, can forget the most terrible disaster.
The biggest environmental disaster
The death of the Aral Sea, which before the drying out began, scientists called the fourth lake by world standards, is considered the most terrible disaster from an environmental point of view. Although the sea is located on the territory of the former USSR, the disaster affected the whole world. Water was taken from it in uncontrolled quantities to water fields and gardens to ensure the fulfillment of the political ambitions and unreasonable plans of Soviet leaders.
Over time, the shoreline moved so deep into the lake that many species of fish and animals died, more than 60,000 people lost their jobs, shipping stopped, the climate changed and droughts became more frequent.
14 August 2008 10:05
There are hundreds of tragedies of the 20th century... Mountains of corpses, blood, pain and suffering - this is what revolutions, world wars, political upheavals and monstrous incidents brought with them. And all of them, as a rule, are carefully photographed and recorded...
And this terrible list opens with photographs from aboard the infamous Titanic... 
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TRAGEDY OF THE TITANIC. More than eighty years have passed since the moment when, on the frosty night of April 14-15, 1912, south of the island of Newfoundland, the giant Titanic, the largest and most luxurious ship of the beginning of the century, sank after colliding with a drifting iceberg. 1,500 passengers and crew died. And although there were enough terrible tragedies in the 20th century, interest in the fate of this ship does not wane even today. Here is a rather rare photograph of the ship three days before departure... 
Unfortunately, we will have to come to terms with the fact that the complete truth about the sinking of the Titanic will never be known. Despite two investigations carried out immediately after the floating palace was swallowed up by the waves, many details remained unclear. The ship sets off on its fateful voyage... 
As soon as Captain Smith was informed that the last ladder had been removed and secured, the pilot got down to business. At the pier, the mooring lines were released, securing the bow and stern to the powerful shore bollards. Then the tugs got to work. The long hull of the Titanic, centimeter by centimeter, began to move away from the pier... A retouched photograph of the Titanic's departure... 
The complex sailing maneuvers were watched by hundreds of passengers on the Titanic's promenade decks and thousands of people on shore. Farewell... 
And then something happened that could have ended very sadly. The New York steamship was in the harbor. At that moment, when the Titanic passed by, the bows of both ships were on the same line, the six steel cables with which the New York was moored were stretched and a strong crack was heard, similar to shots from a revolver, and the ends of the cables whistled in the air and fell onto the embankment into a frightened, fleeing crowd... 
Of course, there are no photographs of the sinking Titanic. But. There are quite a lot of photographs taken from the rescue ship Carpathia. They managed to lift more than 100 people on board - all those who survived on five boats... "Carpathia"... 
Killer iceberg... 
Boat No. 12 is one of those that managed to reach the side of the Carpathia... 
Saved. On board the Carpathia... 
Newsboys. Terrible news... 
HOLODOMOR. This terrible word is used to describe the mass death of the population of the Ukrainian SSR from famine in 1932-1933... In the USSR, the scale of the tragedy that occurred and its real causes were simply hidden... But witnesses recall that the streets of cities and villages were littered with the corpses of the dead, swollen from hunger of people... 
Currently, there is a point of view in the scientific community according to which the mass death of the population of Ukraine was caused by the conscious and purposeful actions of the Soviet leadership... 
During these terrible years, at least 4,500,000 people died in Ukraine... 
There were corpses everywhere... 
Hospitals and morgues could not cope with their responsibilities... 
Improvised cemeteries stretched for tens of kilometers on the outskirts of the city... 
Foreign journalists took photographs out of Ukraine at the risk of their own lives. And yet, something leaked to the press... 
THE LAST AIRSHIP DISASTER. On May 6, 1937, the German aircraft Hidenburg exploded and burned - at that time the world's largest airship, the length of which was about 248 m, the diameter was more than 40 m. It was built in the 30s as a symbol of Hitler's new Germany... A photograph of that time from the archives of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.. 
It could fly 15 thousand km at a maximum speed of 135 km/h. On two floors of the passenger compartment there were 26 double cabins, bars, a reading room, a restaurant, galleries, and kitchens. The ticket cost over $800. "Hidenburg" was destroyed by fire while approaching the mooring mast in Lakehurst (New Jersey, USA), completing a flight from Frankfurt (Germany)... 
32 seconds after the explosion, the airship, more than 2 times the length of a football field, resembled a fantastic charred skeleton of curved metal. This disaster claimed 36 human lives... 
The explosion was heard fifteen miles away. Thanks to the courage and self-control of the captain, the crew and 62 passengers were saved. The fire is directly related to the use of hydrogen, the only carrier gas Germany had available since the United States refused to supply helium in commercial quantities. There was also a version of the terrorist attack - in the early 1970s, information appeared that Nazi enemy Erich Spehl, one of the team members, had planted a time mine... 
PEARL HARBOR. The most famous US naval base in the Hawaiian Islands. On December 7, 1941, during World War II, Japanese carrier aircraft launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and disabled the main forces of the American Pacific Fleet. On December 8, the United States and Great Britain declared war on Japan... 
The sun rose over Pearl Harbor that day in all its usual tropical glory. It was Sunday and the fleet was "home". The officers and sailors thought about the upcoming day of rest. As always on Sundays, the wake-up call was given late. At that moment, when the sounds of the bugle died down, unknown planes appeared in the sky. Without any delay, they began dropping bombs and torpedoes... 
50 bombers, 40 torpedo bombers and 81 dive bombers attacked the ships of the Pacific Fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor... 
When the last Japanese planes left, Navy and Marine Corps casualties stood at 2,835, with 2,086 officers and men killed or mortally wounded. The army's losses amounted to 600 people, of whom 194 were killed and 364 wounded. In addition to damage to ships and hangars, 92 navy aircraft were destroyed and 31 aircraft were damaged, and the army lost 96 aircraft... 
HIROSHIMA - REVENGE FOR PEARL HARBOR? The Great Patriotic War ended on May 9, 1945. But the war did not end there. It lasted until September 2, 1945. And there were fights. And there were victories. And there were victims. And there were tragedies. And the worst of them is the atomic bombing of Japanese cities... 
The area of the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 was about 26 square meters. miles, of which only 7 were completely built up. There were no clearly designated commercial, industrial and residential areas. 75% of the population lived in a densely built area in the city center... 
The regiment commander, Colonel Tibets, named his aircraft “Enola Gay” in honor of his mother. The body of the atomic bomb, located in the bomb bay of the Enola Gay, was covered with many both humorous and serious slogans. Among them was the inscription “from the guys from Indianapolis”... 
On August 6, at about 8 o'clock in the morning, two B-29 bombers appeared over Hiroshima. People continued to work without entering the shelter and looked at enemy planes. When the bombers reached the city center, one of them dropped a small parachute, after which the planes flew away. At 8:15 a.m. there was a deafening explosion that seemed to tear apart heaven and earth in an instant... 
A blinding flash and a terrible roar of explosion - after which the entire city was covered with huge clouds of smoke. Among the smoke, dust and debris, wooden houses burst into flames one after another, and until the end of the day the city was engulfed in smoke and flames. And when the flames finally subsided, the whole city was nothing but ruins. Charred and burned corpses were piled up everywhere, many of them frozen in the position in which the explosion had caught them. The tram, of which only one skeleton remained, was filled with corpses holding on to the belts... 
A single bomb with a capacity of 20 thousand tons of TNT, which exploded at an altitude of 600 meters above the city, instantly destroyed 60 percent of the city to the ground. Of the 306,545 residents of Hiroshima, 176,987 people were affected by the explosion. 92,133 people were killed or missing, 9,428 people were seriously injured and 27,997 people were slightly injured. In an effort to reduce their responsibility, the Americans underestimated the number of casualties as much as possible - the number of killed and wounded military personnel was not taken into account when calculating losses. Many died from radiation sickness. There was nothing left of those who were near the epicenter - the explosion literally evaporated people... 
AUSCHWITZ - 40 HECTARES OF DEATH. The largest extermination camp, it was called a death factory, a death conveyor, a death machine. In fact, in Polish Silesia, on several thousand hectares, the most monstrous state in the world was built with a population of several million people, of whom less than three thousand survived, with its own value system, economy, government, hierarchy, rulers, executioners, victims and heroes. The inscription above the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp read: “Work makes you free.” Entrance to Hell... 
“You were brought here not to a sanatorium, but to a German concentration camp. Remember, there is only one way out from here - through the crematorium pipe.” This is how the voice of Deputy Commandant Frach spoke through the loudspeakers... 
The engineers were given a task: a crematorium was needed, because otherwise there would be too many problems with the bodies of the dead. The engineers calculated: three furnaces, coal, loading 24 hours a day. They gave the answer: 340 people can be burned. The engineering management thanked them, but set a new task - to increase production capacity... 
Two tons of human hair is what they didn’t have time to use. The camp supplied them at 50 pfennigs per kilogram. Industrialists took it willingly - they got inexpensive, durable fabric and ropes... 
The gold hordes from the glasses were neatly stacked in a special room... 
The main entrance... People were brought in carriages... 
Up to six people slept on the bunks. In winter, many people had incontinence. And all this flowed from the upper bunks to the lower ones. And going to the toilet at night was a nightmare. The guards beat people because they had instructions: the latrine must be clean... 
At the same time, the Germans were experimenting with gas. It was served through holes in the ceiling. People didn't know where they were going. They were told that it was for sanitation. The SS men checked whether the prisoners were alive or not. They took a nail and poked it into the body... The road to the gas chamber... 
"Cyclone-B"... 
They took their anger out on the Russians. There were twelve thousand of them, maybe sixty people remained. For example, they had this punishment: in the barracks they opened the doors on one side and the other, but it was winter, and the prisoners had to stand naked. The guards also sprayed them with cold water from a hose... 
They prepared soup for the prisoners, of course, without fat and meat. When they carried a full cauldron, the stew spilled. People licked the ground if a drop fell. The SS men also beat me for this... 
Kids show hands with numbers... 
Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. Less than seven thousand people remained there. The Germans destroyed all five crematoria and gas chambers, and took away most of the prisoners. Those who remained said themselves: we are no longer people after what we experienced here... 
DEATH OF GOEBBELS. During the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the main ideologist of fascism, Joseph Goebbels, took poison, having first poisoned his family - his wife and six children. The corpses, according to his dying order, were burned. Here is a photograph showing the corpse of a criminal. The photo was taken in the Imperial Chancellery building on May 2, 1945 by Major Vasily Krupennikov. On the back of the photo, Vasily wrote: “We covered Goebbels’s sensitive spot with a handkerchief, it was very unpleasant to look at it”... 
TSAR BOMB, "IVAN", "KUZKA'S MOTHER". A thermonuclear device developed at CCCP in the mid-50s by a group of physicists led by Academician I.V. Kurchatov 
The development team included Andrei Sakharov, Viktor Adamsky, Yuri Babaev, Yuri Trunov and Yuri Smirnov. 
The original version of the bomb, weighing 40 tons, was rejected by the designers as too heavy. Then nuclear scientists promised to reduce its weight to 20 tons, and aircraft manufacturers proposed a program for corresponding modification of Tu-16 and Tu-95 bombers. The new nuclear device, according to the tradition adopted in the USSR, received the code designation “Vanya” or “Ivan”, and the Tu-95 chosen as the carrier was named Tu-95V. 
The results of the explosion of the charge, which received the name Tsar Bomba in the West, were impressive - the nuclear “mushroom” of the explosion rose to a height of 64 kilometers, the shock wave resulting from the explosion circled the globe three times, and ionization of the atmosphere caused radio communications interference for hundreds of kilometers from the landfill within one hour... 
The test of the world's most powerful thermonuclear device took place on October 30, 1961, during the XXII Congress of the CPSU. The bomb exploded within the nuclear test site on Novaya Zemlya at an altitude of 4,500 meters. The power of the explosion was about 50 megatons of TNT. No casualties or damage were officially reported... 
ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY. The tragedy happened on November 22, 1963, Friday... 
The number of proposed clues to this incident is confidently moving towards infinity. What is known for certain?.. 
On November 22, the president, along with his wife and Texas Governor John Connally, were driving from the Dallas airport to the city center. As the motorcade moved through the business district of the city, the president was greeted by more than 200 thousand people. At some point, the car slowed down, and that’s when shots rang out. 
The bullets hit JFK in the head and throat. The President fell into the arms of his wife, and the next shot seriously wounded the Governor of Texas in the back. 
This 40-second recording, made on a simple video camera by someone from Dallas, has become the most famous recording in the world. Immediately after the shots were fired, the car rushed to the clinic, where 14 surgeons fought for Kennedy’s life... 
...but despite all their efforts, he died 35 minutes later...
45 minutes after the assassination attempt, the suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was detained. But he, too, was mysteriously killed - 2 days later he was put to death by nightclub owner Jack Ruby. Well, US Vice President Lyndon Johnson became the new president of the country. By the way, he was traveling in another car of the same motorcade... 
The VIETNAM WAR began in August 1964 with an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, during which coast guard ships of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam fired on American destroyers providing fire support to government forces of South Vietnam in their fight against guerrillas... 
To defend South Vietnam, the United States deployed an army of half a million across the ocean, equipped with all types of modern weapons, except nuclear... 
American soldiers fought fiercely in the impenetrable jungle against pro-communist guerrillas (Viet Cong)... 
In huge areas, they destroyed thick foliage that hid the elusive enemy with pesticides, mercilessly bombed partisan areas and the territory of North Vietnam - everything was in vain... 
Subsequently, hostilities covered the territory not only of Vietnam itself, but also of neighboring Laos and Cambodia... 
50 thousand Americans died; Many times more Vietnamese were killed. By the beginning of 1968, the war had reached a dead end; peace negotiations began in May 1968, which lasted more than four years... On January 27, 1973, the US administration agreed to sign an agreement on the conditions for the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. The war, which the United States thought would be a cakewalk, turned out to be America's nightmare. The post-war crisis continued in the United States for more than 10 years. It’s hard to say how it would have ended if the Afghan crisis had not turned up…
In the second half of the 20th century, humanity learned two terrible phrases - “world terrorism” and “man-made disaster”... Since the 60s of the last century, cosmodromes and factories, trains and planes, houses and nuclear reactors have been blowing up one after another in this world ...
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BAIKONUR, OCTOBER 24, 1960. "Nedelin's catastrophe." The explosion of the R-16 intercontinental ballistic missile during testing at the cosmodrome... 
The explosion and resulting fire killed more than 90 people, including the commander-in-chief of the Strategic Missile Forces... According to unofficial data, there were 165... 
The designer, academician M.K. Yangel, who was absent for a short time before the start, miraculously survived... 
The disaster was kept secret until the end of the 90s... 
However, much less tragic events were also classified then. Interestingly, there are still rumors in Baikonur to this day that the Soviet Union was sending people into space even before Gagarin. But since these attempts ended in the death of the astronauts, they were kept secret... 
And the monument to the dead turned out to be very modest... 
BLOODY TUESDAY IN MUNICH. On September 5, 1972, at the XX Olympics, the most monstrous tragedy in the history of sports competitions occurred. At 3:30 in the morning, 8 heavily armed terrorists belonging to the Palestine Liberation Organization militant group Black September burst into one of the houses of the Olympic Village. They managed to take 11 members of the Israeli sports delegation hostage. The security of the Olympic Village simply did not notice the terrorists... 
Having climbed through the metal mesh enclosing the athletes' dormitory, the terrorists unpack their weapons and enter entrance No. 1 of building 31. A few seconds later, they persistently knock on the door of the room in which the Israeli classical wrestling judge Yosef Gutfreund is located. Gutfreund is famous for his heroic physique and Hercules strength. Seeing suspicious people, he leans his whole body on the door and detains the criminals for a few seconds... 
One of the terrorists orders one of the hostages to show the rooms in which the rest of the Israelis live. He refuses, and the terrorist fires a burst of Kalashnikov at him. Thus, he saves the lives of shooters, fencers, a race walker and a swimmer... 
Still, 12 Israelis were captured by the terrorists. Demands were put forward - the immediate release of 234 terrorists from Israeli prisons and 16 from Western European prisons... Negotiations continued until late in the evening... 
The bodies of all eleven dead athletes were sent to Israel. During the unsuccessful operation, two German citizens also died: a policeman and the pilot of one of the helicopters. In the homeland of the victims, in addition to relatives, the funeral ceremony was attended by the head of government Golda Meir, all ministers, members of the Knesset, members of the sports delegation who left the Olympics, thousands of Israeli citizens... 
CHERNOBYL DISASTER. On April 26, 1986, 187 control and protection system rods entered the core to shut down the reactor. The chain reaction had to be broken. However, after 3 seconds, alarm signals were registered for exceeding the reactor power and increasing pressure. And after another 4 seconds - a dull explosion that shook the entire building. The emergency protection rods stopped before they were even halfway... 
Sparkling clumps began to fly out from the roof of the fourth power unit, as if from the mouth of a volcano. They rose high up. It looked like fireworks. The clumps scattered into multi-colored sparks and fell in different places... 
A black fireball soared up, forming a cloud that stretched horizontally into a black cloud and went to the side, spreading death, disease and misfortune in the form of small, small drops.. 
And at this time people were still working inside. There is no roof, part of the wall is destroyed... The lights went out, the phone went off. Floors are collapsing. The floor is shaking. The premises are filled with either steam, fog, or dust. Short circuit sparks flash. Radiation monitoring devices are off the charts. Hot radioactive water is flowing everywhere... 
After the largest man-made disaster in world history, pine trees like these were born in the Zone... 
...such animals... 
...and these are the children... 
These photographs were taken for one of the secret reports to the Central Committee of the USSR Politburo... 
Now almost all houses in the Zone look like this... 
THE 1988 EARTHQUAKE THAT DESTROYED THE CITY OF SPITAK. Also in Armenia, the cities of Leninakan, Stepanavan, Kirovakan were destroyed. 58 villages in the north-west of the republic were reduced to ruins, almost 400 villages were partially destroyed. 
450 mine rescuers arrived from the fraternal union republics in Armenia. 6.5 thousand military personnel, 25 teams of military doctors, and 400 units of army equipment are participating in rescue operations in the disaster zone. 
Tens of thousands of people died, 514 thousand people were left homeless. The loss of national wealth amounted to 8.8 billion rubles. 
Over the past 80 years, this is the most powerful earthquake in the Caucasus... 
On March 1, 1995, FAMOUS TV JOURNALIST VLAD LISTYEV was KILLED at the entrance of his house. 
The murder of the general director of ORT and simply a popular person came as a shock to millions of people. He was so loved and popular that even the then head of state Boris Yeltsin, abandoning everything, rushed to Ostankino to apologize to the television crew. The investigation began almost immediately, sketches of the alleged killers were made and published, but the hot pursuit did not produce results. 
Over the past 11 years, the wording of the Prosecutor General's Office messages has remained almost unchanged. Only the volume of investigation materials has changed: this year there are already more than 200 volumes. 
CAPTURE OF BUDENNOVSK. On June 14, 1995, detachments of Chechen militants under the command of Shamil Basayev entered Budennovsk and took about 1,500 hostages. The terrorists, having made the cessation of hostilities and the start of negotiations in Chechnya a condition for the release of the hostages, gained a foothold in the city hospital. 
On June 17, special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB made several attempts to storm the hospital. During these operations, both the terrorists and the attackers were killed and wounded, but the hostages suffered the most (from the attackers’ fire) - up to 30 people died and many were wounded. During the assault, the terrorists forced the hostages, including women, to stand at the windows and shout to the Russian servicemen: “Don’t shoot!” 
After the failure of the assault on June 18, through the mediation of S.A. Kovalev, negotiations began between Prime Minister Chernomyrdin and Basayev, during which it was possible to reach an agreement on the release of the hostages. The conditions for their release were: the cessation of hostilities on the territory of Chechnya and the resolution of controversial issues through negotiations. A detachment of militants traveled on buses provided by the federal side to the mountainous Chechen village of Zandak. At the same time, 120 hostages who volunteered to accompany the terrorists were used as “human shields”. In total, as a result of this terrorist action in Budennovsk, 105 civilians were killed, including 18 women, 17 men over 55 years old, a boy and a girl under 16 years old. 11 police officers and at least 14 military personnel were also killed. 
THE MURDER OF YITZHAK RABIN. Every Israeli knows the name of the killer of the Israeli prime minister. Yigal Yigal Amir is a member of the underground ultra-ultra-right nationalist organization "Eyal" (Lions of Judah). 
The murder took place on November 4, 1995 in Tel Aviv, the evening after thousands of people demonstrated in support of the peace process. Yitzhak Rabin, wounded in the back by two bullets, was taken to the nearby Ihillov hospital in the back seat of a government limousine. 
By 11 p.m., Rabin's personal secretary reported that the prime minister had been fatally shot. 
The aging leader of the Workers' Party, Yitzhak Rabin, whose policies were subject to severe criticism, was instantly canonized. It is now customary in Israel to name squares, streets and educational institutions after him... 
HOUSE EXPLOSIONS IN MOSCOW AND VOLGODONSK IN 1999. A series of terrorist attacks in Moscow and Volgodonsk in September 1999 claimed the lives of more than 300 people. The explosions occurred in a situation where fighting was taking place in Dagestan between federal troops and invading armed separatist detachments from Chechnya, led by Shamil Basayev... 
Explosion on Guryanov Street. On September 8, 1999, at 11:58 p.m., an explosion occurred in the basement of a 9-story residential building 19 on Guryanova Street (Pechatniki district) in the southeast of Moscow. The building was partially destroyed, one section of the residential building collapsed. Rescuers worked on the ruins of a residential building for several days... 
According to official data, the explosion killed 109 people and injured 160 people. As explosives experts established, an explosive device with a capacity of 300-400 kg of TNT went off in the basement of the house. The blast wave deformed the structures of neighboring house 19. A few days later, houses 17 and 19 were destroyed by explosives experts, the residents were relocated to other houses... 
There were speculations in the media that this was a terrorist attack. A day of mourning for those killed in the explosion was set for September 13. On the same day, a sketch of a man who allegedly rented a basement in a residential building was shown on television... 
Explosion on Kashirskoye Highway. On September 13, at 5 a.m., a new explosion occurred on Kashirskoye Highway in an 8-story residential building number 6/3. As a result of the explosion, the house was completely destroyed, almost all the residents in the residential building - 124 people - were killed, 9 people were injured and rescuers pulled them out of the rubble, and 119 families were affected. Due to the fact that the house was made of bricks, almost all the residents who were in it during the explosion died... 
On the same day, September 13, in the Maryino area, supplies of explosives were found in sugar bags, sufficient to destroy several more residential buildings. A state of emergency was not declared, but unprecedented security measures were taken in Moscow and other cities, and all attics and basements were checked. Residents of residential buildings spontaneously organized round-the-clock watches for several months... 
On September 16, a few days after the explosions in Moscow, at 5.40 am, the city of Volgodonsk, Rostov Region, was rocked by a terrible explosion. A GAZ-53 van filled with explosives exploded near the police department building and next to a 9-story residential building on Gagarin Street, 35. A crater with a diameter of 15 m and a depth of 3 m formed in the courtyard of the house. 437 people lived in 144 apartments of the panel building - 18 people died. 
TRAGEDY IN THE TRANSITION ON PUSHKIN SQUARE. Another powerful explosion occurred in Moscow. The explosive device was planted by two young Caucasians... 
They allegedly approached commercial booth number 40 and asked to sell them goods for US dollars. The seller refused, then the young people asked the seller to look after the bag while they went to exchange dollars for rubles. Literally a few minutes after they left, a homemade explosive device lying in the bag with a capacity of 400 grams to 1.5 kg of TNT went off... 
According to witnesses who were in the passage at that moment, first there was a strong bang and a bright flash, then a blast wave rolled through the tunnel and heavy smoke poured out. People began to run out. Those who were closer to the epicenter had numerous burns and wounds, and blood was pouring out. The explosion was so strong that it literally tore the clothes off the victims... 
The explosion killed 7 people, 93 sought medical help. Of these, 59 people were taken to city hospitals, 34 refused hospitalization. Among the victims were three children... 
THE DEATH OF "KURSK". On August 12, 2000, a tragedy broke out in the Barants Sea, riveting hundreds of millions of people to their television screens 
For several days, Russian and British naval forces tried to rescue 118 crew members of the nuclear submarine from underwater captivity. 
However, all efforts were in vain... 
As the investigation later established, the tragedy was caused by the explosion of the so-called “thick torpedo” in the torpedo compartment. All submariners on board died. 
TRAGEDY AT DUBROVKA. On October 23, 2002, at 21:15, armed men in camouflage burst into the building of the Theater Center on Dubrovka, on Melnikov Street (formerly the Palace of Culture of the State Bearing Plant). At that time, the musical “Nord-Ost” was playing at the cultural center; there were more than 700 people in the hall. The terrorists declared all people - spectators and theater workers - hostages and began to mine the building... 
At 10 o'clock in the evening it became known that the theater building was captured by a detachment of Chechen militants led by Movsar Barayev, among the terrorists there were women, all of them were hung with explosives... 
On October 24, at a quarter past midnight, the first attempt was made to establish contact with the terrorists: State Duma deputy from Chechnya Aslambek Aslakhanov entered the center building. At half past midnight, several shots were heard in the building. The hostages who managed to contact the television companies by mobile phones asked not to begin the assault: “These people say that for every one of their own killed or wounded, they will kill 10 hostages”... 
On October 26, at five hours and 30 minutes, three explosions and several machine gun bursts were heard near the Palace of Culture building. At about six o'clock the special forces began the assault, during which nerve gas was used. At half past seven in the morning, an official representative of the FSB reported that the Theater Center was under the control of the special services, Movsar Barayev and most of the terrorists had been destroyed... 
At 7:25 a.m., Russian Presidential Assistant Sergei Yastrzhembsky officially announced that the operation to free the hostages was completed. The number of neutralized terrorists in the building of the Theater Center on Dubrovka alone amounted to 50 people - 18 women and 32 men. Three terrorists detained... 
On November 7, 2002, the Moscow prosecutor's office published a list of citizens who died as a result of the actions of terrorists who seized the theater center on Dubrovka. It included 128 people: 120 Russians and 8 citizens from near and far abroad countries. Five hostages received gunshot wounds as a result of the militants' actions. The four dead hostages could not be identified for a long time, and their names were not included in the lists of health authorities... 
SEPTEMBER 11 – WAR WITHOUT RULES. America has never known such a tragedy... The worst nightmares have come true... Manhattan, 8 hours 44 minutes in the morning on September 11, 2001, a minute before the tragedy. 
At 8:45 a.m., the first kamikaze plane crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. The footage shows how the second one flies up... 
One of the towers, 110 floors high, was rammed right through... 
An explosion and immediately a strong fire. The last person to answer the phone from the upper floors shouted "We are dying!" 
A series of powerful explosions took place along the perimeter of the Twin Towers... 
The fire burst out. The top of the building “falls” into the base... 
The two tallest buildings of the World Trade Center collapsed after standing for less than an hour... 
The streets of Manhattan south of Colon Street are shrouded in such dense smoke that rescuers cannot get there... 
BESLAN - A BITTER LESSON. At approximately 8 a.m. on September 1, 2004, near the village of Khurikau, on the border of the Mozdok and Pravoberezhny regions of North Ossetia, approximately 60 km from Beslan, armed people stopped a local district police officer, a police major, and put him in their car. According to preliminary data, it was with the help of the ID of an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs that the militants in a GAZ-66 and two cars freely passed several checkpoints on the way to Beslan... 
During the ceremonial assembly on the occasion of September 1, they broke into the territory of school No. 1. In total, according to the education committee of the Beslan administration, 895 students and 59 teachers and technical staff of the school were present at the line. The number of parents who came to see their children off to school is unknown... 
Having opened indiscriminate fire in the air, the militants ordered everyone present to enter the school building, but the majority - mostly high school students and adults - were able to simply run away. Those who could not do this - primary school students and their parents and some teachers - were driven into the gym by the bandits... 
Then everything happened like in a nightmare... An explosion was recorded inside the school. Data on the number of hostages is still scattered. Based on lists compiled by relatives and parents of students, it was established that there could be 132 children in the school. In total, according to unconfirmed data, the militants managed to capture from 300 to 400 people... 
Information appears that the gym is mined... Bodies are burning in the gym, they are being poured from fire hoses. Strong explosions inside the school are heard with some persistent frequency. Meanwhile, the crowd slowly but surely begins to approach the building. Soldiers of the internal troops are trying to get in their way. “Better let me in,” one of the men says calmly. And they retreat. People want to go to the gym and see with their own eyes how many people were killed there... 
The hostages are shot, they die from dehydration and suffocation... 
This is what the gym looked like after the assault... 
Sad results: in Beslan they say that about six hundred people were saved. No one denies that there were at least a thousand hostages - so the total number of victims is about 400 people. There is still no exact data - many are missing... 
At the end of December 2004, the strongest earthquake and tsunami in the last 40 years occurred in six countries in Southeast Asia. 
The first and most powerful earthquake occurred on December 26 at about 03:00 in the Indian Ocean. Literally a few minutes later, a destructive tsunami wave reached land - first of all, the island of Sumatra (Indonesia), and then Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives / 
Eyewitnesses described how, in absolutely sunny, windless weather, the water suddenly began to recede from the beach, and then a six-meter wave formed. Those who were able to escape in these few minutes were saved. Tons of water swept away everything in its path: people, cars and even entire hotels 
The number of victims reached 400 thousand people. About 100 thousand more have not yet been found or identified. 
The largest number of victims - more than 10 thousand - was registered in Indonesia, off the coast of which there was an epicenter measuring 9 points on the Richter scale. 
Then hundreds of settlements were flooded and wiped off the face of the earth. 
Seismologists call the December events exceptional. According to them, no more than five such earthquakes have been recorded over the past century. 
This region of South-East Asia still cannot recover from the terrible destruction. 
Disasters have been known for a long time - volcanic eruptions, powerful earthquakes, and tornadoes. In the last century there have been many water disasters and terrible nuclear disasters.
The worst disasters on the water
Man has been sailing on sailboats, boats, and ships across the vast oceans and seas for hundreds of years. During this time, a huge number of disasters, shipwrecks and accidents occurred.In 1915, a British passenger liner was torpedoed by a German submarine. The ship sank in eighteen minutes, being thirteen kilometers from the coast of Ireland. One thousand one hundred and ninety-eight people died.
In April 1944, a terrible disaster occurred in the port of Bombay. It all started with the fact that during the unloading of a single-screw steamer, which was loaded with gross violations of safety regulations, a violent explosion occurred. It is known that the ship carried one and a half tons of explosives, several tons of cotton, sulfur, wood, and gold bars. After the first explosion, a second one sounded. The burning cotton scattered over a radius of almost a kilometer. Almost all the ships and warehouses burned, and fires started in the city. They were extinguished only after two weeks. As a result, about two and a half thousand people were hospitalized, one thousand three hundred and seventy-six people died. The port was restored only after seven months.
The most famous water disaster is the sinking of the Titanic. Colliding with an iceberg during its first voyage, the ship sank. More than one and a half thousand people died.
In December 1917, the French warship Mont Blanc collided with the Norwegian ship Imo near the city of Halifax. A powerful explosion occurred, leading to the destruction of not only the port, but also part of the city. The fact is that Mont Blanc was loaded exclusively with explosives. About two thousand people died, nine thousand were injured. This is the most powerful explosion of the pre-nuclear era.
Three thousand one hundred and thirty people died on the French cruiser after a torpedo attack by a German submarine in 1916. As a result of the torpedoing of the German floating hospital "General Steuben", about three thousand six hundred and eight people died.
In December 1987, the Philippine passenger ferry Dona Paz collided with the tanker Vector. Four thousand three hundred and seventy-five people died.
In May 1945, a tragedy occurred in the Baltic Sea, which claimed the lives of about eight thousand people. The cargo ship Tilbeck and the liner Cap Arcona came under fire from British aircraft. As a result of the torpedoing of the Goya by a Soviet submarine in the spring of 1945, six thousand nine hundred people died.
“Wilhelm Gustlow” was the name of the German passenger liner sunk by a submarine under the command of Marinesco in January 1945. The exact number of victims is unknown, approximately nine thousand people.
The worst disasters in Russia
We can name several terrible disasters that occurred on Russian territory. Thus, in June 1989, one of the largest train accidents in Russia occurred near Ufa. A huge explosion occurred while two passenger trains were passing by. An unlimited cloud of fuel-air mixture exploded, which was formed due to an accident on a nearby pipeline. According to some sources, five hundred and seventy-five people died, according to others, six hundred and forty-five. Another six hundred people were wounded. 
The death of the Aral Sea is considered the worst environmental disaster on the territory of the former USSR. For a number of reasons: soil, social, biological, the Aral Sea has almost completely dried up in fifty years. Most of its tributaries were used for irrigation and some other agricultural purposes in the sixties. The Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world. Since the influx of fresh water was significantly reduced, the lake gradually died.
In the summer of 2012, a massive flood occurred in the Krasnodar region. It is considered the largest disaster on Russian territory. Five months' worth of precipitation fell in two days in July. The city of Krymsk was almost completely washed away by water. Officially, 179 people were declared dead, of which 159 were residents of Krymsk. More than 34 thousand local residents were affected.
The worst nuclear disasters
Huge numbers of people are exposed to nuclear disasters. So in April 1986, one of the power units of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded. Radioactive substances released into the atmosphere settled on nearby villages and towns. This accident is one of the most destructive of its kind. Hundreds of thousands of people took part in the liquidation of the accident. Several hundred people were killed or injured. A thirty-kilometer exclusion zone has been formed around the nuclear power plant. The scale of the disaster is still unclear.In Japan, in March 2011, an explosion occurred at the Fukushima-1 nuclear power plant during an earthquake. Because of this, a large amount of radioactive substances entered the atmosphere. At first, officials hushed up the scale of the disaster.
After the Chernobyl disaster, the most significant nuclear accident is considered to be the one that occurred in 1999 in the Japanese city of Tokaimura. An accident occurred at a uranium processing plant. Six hundred people were exposed to radiation, four people died.
The worst disaster in human history
The explosion of an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 is considered the most disastrous disaster for the biosphere in the entire existence of mankind. The platform itself went under water after the explosion. As a result, a huge volume of petroleum products entered the world's oceans. The spill lasted one hundred and fifty-two days. The oil film covered an area equal to seventy-five thousand square kilometers in the Gulf of Mexico. 
In terms of the number of victims, the disaster that occurred in India in the city of Bhapole in December 1984 is considered the largest. There was a chemical leak at one of the factories. Eighteen thousand people died. Until now, the causes of this disaster have not been fully elucidated.
It is impossible not to mention the worst fire that occurred in London in 1666. The fire spread across the city with lightning speed, destroying about seventy thousand houses and killing about eighty thousand people. The fire lasted for four days.
Not only disasters are terrible, but also entertainment. The website has a rating of the scariest attractions in the world.
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17.04.2013
Natural disasters unpredictable, destructive, unstoppable. Perhaps this is why humanity fears them most. We offer you the top rating in history, they claimed a huge number of lives.
10. Banqiao Dam collapse, 1975
The dam was built to contain the effects of about 12 inches of rainfall daily. However, in August 1975 it became clear that this was not enough. As a result of the collision of cyclones, Typhoon Nina brought with it heavy rains - 7.46 inches per hour, which means 41.7 inches daily. In addition, due to clogging, the dam could no longer fulfill its role. Over the course of a few days, 15.738 billion tons of water burst through it, which swept through the nearby area in a deadly wave. More than 231,000 people died.
9. Earthquake in Haiyan, China, 1920
As a result of the earthquake, which is on the 9th line in the top ranking deadliest natural disasters in history, 7 provinces of China were affected. In the Hainian region alone, 73,000 people died, and more than 200,000 people died nationwide. The tremors continued for the next three years. It caused landslides and large ground cracks. The earthquake was so strong that some rivers changed course, and natural dams appeared in some.
8. Tangshan Earthquake, 1976
It occurred on July 28, 1976 and is called the strongest earthquake of the 20th century. The epicenter was the city of Tangshan, located in Hebei Province, China. In 10 seconds, practically nothing remained of a densely populated, large industrial city. The number of victims is about 220,000.
7. Antakya (Antioch) earthquake, 565
Despite the small number of details that have survived to this day, The earthquake was one of the most destructive and claimed more than 250,000 lives and caused enormous damage to the economy.
6. Indian Ocean earthquake/tsunami, 2004
It happened on December 24, 2004, just in time for Christmas. The epicenter was located off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. The hardest hit countries were Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, and Thailand. The second earthquake in history with a magnitude of 9.1 -9.3. it was the cause of a number of other earthquakes around the globe, for example in Alaska. It also caused a deadly tsunami. More than 225,000 people died.
5. Indian cyclone, 1839
In 1839, an extremely large cyclone hit India. On November 25, a storm practically destroyed the city of Coringa. He literally destroyed everything he came into contact with. 2,000 ships docked at the port were wiped off the face of the earth. The city was not restored. The storm surges it attracted killed more than 300,000 people.
4. Cyclone Bola, 1970
After Cyclone Bola swept through the lands of Pakistan, more than half of the arable land was contaminated and spoiled, a small part of the rice and grains was saved, but famine could no longer be avoided. In addition, about 500,000 people died from the heavy rains and flooding that it caused. Wind force -115 meters per hour, hurricane - category 3.
3. Shaanxi earthquake, 1556
The most destructive earthquake in history occurred on February 14, 1556 in China. Its epicenter was in the Wei River Valley and as a result, about 97 provinces were affected. Buildings were destroyed, half the people living in them were killed. According to some reports, 60% of the population of Huasqian province died. A total of 830,000 people died. The tremors continued for another six months.
2. Yellow River Flood, 1887
The Yellow River in China is extremely susceptible to flooding and overflowing its banks. In 1887, this resulted in the flooding of 50,000 square miles around. According to some estimates, the flood claimed the lives of 900,000 – 2,000,000 people. Farmers, knowing the characteristics of the river, built dams that saved them from the annual floods, but that year, the water swept away both the farmers and their homes.
1. Flood of central China, 1931
According to statistics, the flood that occurred in 1931 became the most terrible in history. After a long drought, 7 cyclones came to China at once, bringing with them hundreds of liters of rain. As a result, three rivers overflowed their banks. The flood killed 4 million people.
