1871 Peshtigo fire | |
|---|---|
| Total costs | N/A |
| Deaths | 2500 |
The Peshtigo fire was a large forest fire on Oct. 8, 1871, in northeastern Wisconsin, United States, including much of the southern half of the Door Peninsula and adjacent parts of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The largest community in the affected area was Peshtigo, Wisconsin which had a population of approximately 1,700 residents. The fire burned about 1.2 million acres and is the deadliest wildfire in recorded history, with the number of deaths estimated between 1,500 and 2,500. Although the exact number of deaths is debated, mass graves [both those already exhumed and those still being discovered] in Peshtigo and the surrounding areas show that the death toll of the blaze was most likely greater than the 1889 Johnstown flood death toll of 2,200 people or more.Occurring on the same day as the more famous Great Chicago Fire, the Peshtigo fire has been largely forgotten, even though it killed far more people. In total, the Great Chicago Fire had taken one-fifth as many lives as the Peshtigo Fire. 'Everybody's heard about the Chicago fire, and that got all the publicity at the time,' said a volunteer at the Peshtigo Fire Museum, named Ruth Wiltzius, whose great-grandfather perished while trying to escape. 'Peshtigo was a backwards lumber town then -- who had ever heard of it? Chicago was the big city. Which one was going to get more attention?'Nonetheless, several cities in Michigan, including Holland and Manistee (across Lake Michigan from Peshtigo) and Port Huron (at the southern end of Lake Huron), also had major fires on the same day. These fires, along with many other fires of the nineteenth century had the same basic causes: small fires coupled with unusually dry weather.
Source: Wikipedia Deccan famine 1630-1632 | |
|---|---|
| Total costs | N/A |
| Deaths | 7400000 |
The Deccan famine of 1630–1632 was a famine associated with a back-to-back crop failure. The famine happened during the reign of Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. The famine was the result of three consecutive staple crop failures. The main reasons were climate and plague, leading to intense hunger, disease, and displacement in the region. About three million people died in Gujarat in the ten months ending in October 1631 while another million died around Ahmednagar. The Dutch report gives an overall death toll of 7.4 million by late 1631, which might be for the whole region.
Source: WikipediaThe Tseax Cone ( SEE-aks), also called the Tseax River Cone or the Aiyansh Volcano, is a young...
The years before 1890 featured the pre-1890 North Indian Ocean cyclone seasons. Each season was...
Mount Hudson (Spanish: Volcán Hudson, Monte Hudson) is a stratovolcano in southern Chile, and the...
The 1962 Buin Zahra earthquake occurred on September 1 in the area of Buin Zahra, Qazvin...
Welcome to 