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

Looking for an amusing article to tickle your funny bone? You’ve definitely come to the wrong place. While we live in strange times where a cheerful diversion does us a lot of good, it’s also important to never forget that humans have done some pretty terrible things over the years. In no particular order, here are:

1. The Sinking of the Titanic

When the passenger ship the RMS Titanic was built, its creators boasted that it was unsinkable. Their degree of arrogance was so great that they didn’t bother supplying the ship with enough lifeboats to save all of its 2,200 passengers in the event that it did sink. Some of the planners had insisted on 64 lifeboats, which would likely have been sufficient, but ultimately the number was lowered to 32 and finally 16. The reason? The White Star Line felt they would take up too much space on the deck. When the ship did hit the iceberg, only around 700 passengers survived, with the remaining 1,500 dying unnecessarily.

2. The Cambodian Genocide

When Pol Pot came to power in 1975, his goal was to take the Cultural Revolution to a whole other, tragic level. In less than 4 years, he and his Khmer Rouge (the Communist Party rulers) murdered between 1.5 million and 2 million citizens, including the country’s previous leadership intellectuals, Buddhists, Muslims, and ethnic Chinese and Vietnamese, among others. Brainwashed children were convinced to carry out atrocities. Pol Pot was eventually arrested in 1998, but died in captivity before he could be brought to justice.

3. The Salem Witch Trials

The witch trials in colonial Salem, Massachusetts, which took place between 1692 and 1693, frankly prove how stupid the human race can be. Spurred on by religious extremism, family feuds and simple vindictiveness between neighbors, 200 victims in total — including lots of teenage girls and even younger — were accused of committing witchcraft, with 30 of them being found guilty and 19 executed through hanging. The folks quickly came to their senses and within a few years most of the accused were exonerated. But goodness, it never should have come to that!

4. The Great Leap Forward

Launched by Chairman Mao Zedong in 1958, the purpose of this campaign was to transform the country from an agrarian economy to a communist society. China invested a significant amount of money into this plan, but it was ultimately a disaster. The country’s economy shrank significantly, and as a result of exaggerated agricultural output, roughly 45 million Chinese died of starvation, the most deadly famine in human history.

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