End of the world isn't nigh

The year 2005 does not enter the top league of disaster years, even if we include the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004. The 20th century alone witnessed ten years in which those killed by natural disasters numbered millions. Moreover, individual events in 2005 do not compare with past horrors. How does Hurricane Katrina, bad though it was, match the terrible 1970 Bhola cyclone in East Pakistan that killed 500,000 people? How does the Himalayan earthquake equate with the 1976 Tangshan earthquake that destroyed 242,000 more, or the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake that resulted in a death toll of 830,000?

This is a short article that gives quite a few examples to the fact that, as bad as it was, this past years' natural disasters just don't add up to the doom and gloom that so many End-of-the-Worlders would like you to believe. In just the few minutes it takes to read that article, you'll come into a little perspective. This is why knowing, or at least researching a few historical facts every once in a while, can place current events within a context that is resistent to hysterical hype.

Context, is pretty much the nature of many of my rants on this blog, as practically everything I see in this world has some lesson to be learned, from the past. History does not just belong to the dead, to be forgotten and pushed aside, along with last years' fashion trend.