8 Most Horrible Events and Acts in Human History – Number 3 is the Worst

5. The Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Japan

When President Harry Truman made the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was ostensibly done in order to avoid an invasion of Japan. The claim was that countless American soldiers were spared as a result. But when you look at the facts, Japan was already on the ropes, having lost all the territory it had conquered, and the neighboring Soviet Union was breathing down its neck. Between 130,000 and 229,000 Japanese — mostly civilians — died as a result of the bombings, some in an instant while others in the following months, suffering from starvation and radiation poisoning. Historians have argued that a naval blockade and conventional bombing would have achieved the same outcome — Japan’s surrender — without having to destroy entire cities in the process.

6. The Holodomor

Ukrainians have always been fiercely proud and independent people, making them a throne in Josef Stalin’s side in the early days of his reign of the Soviet Union. During his plan to force collectivization on Ukraine, he deliberately manufactured a famine in order to break the will of the peasantry. While there was plenty of food to go around, Stalin confiscated grain and livestock, even exporting it to other countries while Ukrainians starved. In total, 3.9 million Ukrainians — or 13% of its entire population — died.

7. The Atlantic Slave Trade

Starting in the 16th century and lasting through the 1800s, between 12-12.8 million Africans were shipped to the Americas for the purposes of slavery, with most of them remaining enslaved for their entire lives, along with several generations of Black men and women that followed. It’s also estimated that around 1.2-2.4 million never made it to shore, having died from disease during the long, horrifying journey. Although slavery was banned in the U.S. following President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclaimation on January 1, 1863, and a lot of progress has been made since, the events of just these past four years demonstrate that there’s a great deal of work left to do.

8. The Holocaust

Wars are always horrible and full of injustices, but no regime in the history of the world has committed the level of atrocities at the scale that Nazi Germany did. In total, the Holocaust — the systematic extermination primarily of the Jews, but also gypsies, homosexuals, and others regarded as “undesirables” — resulted in 11 million deaths. Aside from gassing Jews at the various death camps in Germany and Poland, Nazis such as Dr. Josef Mengele conducted horrible experiments, most of which served no practical medical purpose.

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