The Deadliest Events Since 1900

When we think about deadly events in human history, we tend to think about wars, terrorist attacks, and mass killings. But when you look at the events in history that have caused the biggest losses of life, they are generally accidents or natural disasters. While we can’t stop accidents and natural disasters from happening, we can use knowledge of past events to mitigate the damage caused by them.

I’ve compiled a list of the deadliest events since 1900. In the coming months and years, I hope to examine each one in detail so we can learn from these deadly events and hopefully learn what we can do to prevent needless deaths in the future.

This information was taken from Wikipedia and I compiled it all myself, so there may be mistakes or oversights. There were a few instances where I had to make a judgment call, such as if I had to choose between an event where 10,000 people died versus an event where a range between 5,000 and 12,000 people died. History is not always clear-cut and often, reliable numbers are impossible to determine.

• 1900 The 1900 Galveston hurricane kills about 6,000–12,000 people.
• 1901 The Pacific Mail Steamship Company‘s SS City of Rio de Janeiro sinks entering San Francisco Bay, killing 128.
• 1902 In Martinique, Mount Pel ée erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing over 30,000.
• 1903 The 7.0 Ms Manzikert earthquake affects eastern Turkey, leaving 3,500 dead.
• 1904 A fire aboard the steamboat General Slocum in New York City’s East River kills 1,021.
• 1905 As the second year of the massive Russo-Japanese War began, more than 100,000 died in the largest world battles of that era, and the war chaos lead to a revolution against the Tsar. (Shostakovich‘s 11th Symphony is subtitled “The Year 1905” to commemorate this.)
• 1906 A magnitude 8.2 earthquake in Valpara íso, Chile leaves approximately 20,000 dead.
• 1907 The 1907 Romanian Peasants’ Revolt results in possibly as many as 11,000 deaths.
• 1908 The 7.1 Mw Messina earthquake shakes Southern Italy with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme), killing between 75,000 and 200,000
• 1909 Adana massacre: Ottoman Turks kill 15,000–30,000 Armenian Christians in the Adana Vilayet.
• 1910 A form of pneumonic plague spreads through northeastern China, killing more than 40,000
• 1911 1911 Kebin earthquake: An earthquake of 7.7 moment magnitude strikes near Almaty in Russian Turkestan, killing 450 or more people.
• 1912 Sinking of the RMS  Titanic: RMS  Titanic strikes an iceberg in the northern Atlantic Ocean and sinks with the loss of 1517 lives. The wreck will not be discovered until 1985.
• 1913 Battle of Bud Bagsak: Armed with guns and heavy artillery, U.S. and Philippine troops under General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing fight a four-day battle against 500 Moro rebels who are armed mostly with kampilan swords. The rebels are killed in a final desperate charge on June 15
• 1914 First Battle of the Marne begins: Situated north-east of Paris, the French 6th Army under General Maunoury attacks German forces near to Paris. Over 2,000,000 fight (500,000 are killed/wounded) in the Allied victory. A French and British counterattack at the Marne ends the German advance on Paris
• 1915 The 6.7 Mw Avezzano earthquake shakes the Province of L’Aquila in Italy with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). Various agencies estimate the number of people killed to be 29,978–32,610
• 1916 WWI: Battle of the Somme, opening with explosion of the British Y Sap mine and the Battle of Albert: More than one million soldiers die, with 57,470 British Empire casualties on the first day, 19,240 of them killed, the British Army’s bloodiest day. The immediate result is tactically inconclusive.
• 1917 WWI: Battle of Messines opens with the British Army detonating 19 ammonal mines under the German lines, killing 10,000 in the deadliest deliberate non-nuclear man-made explosion in history
• 1918 “Spanish ‘flu” becomes pandemic. Over 30 million people die in the following 6 months.
• 1919 Volcano Kelud erupts in Java, killing about 5,000.
• 1920 An 8.6 Richter scale Haiyuan earthquake causes a landslide in Gansu Province, China, killing 180,000.
• 1921 Russian famine: Roughly 5,000,000 people die
• 1922 A typhoon hits Shantou, China, killing more than 5,000 people
• 1923 The Great Kant ō earthquake devastates Tokyo and Yokohama, killing an estimated 142,807 people, but according to a Japanese construction research center report in 2005, 105,000 are confirmed dead
• 1924 August Uprising: Georgia rises against rule by the Soviet Union in an abortive rebellion in which several thousands die
• 1925 The Tri-State Tornado, the deadliest in U.S. history, rampages through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, killing 695 people and injuring 2,027. It hits the towns of Murphysboro, Illinois; Gorham, Illinois; Ellington, Missouri; and Griffin, Indiana.
• 1926 A hurricane killed 650 in Cuba.
• 1927 The 7.6 Mw Gulang earthquake affects Gansu in northwest China with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme), leaving over 40,000 dead
• 1928 The Okeechobee hurricane kills at least 2,500 people in Florida.
• 1929 The 7.2 Mw Kopet Dag earthquake shakes the Iran-Turkmenistan border region with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), killing up to 3,800 and injuring 1,121
• 1930 The 7.1 Mw Salmas earthquake shakes northwestern Iran and southeastern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). Up to three-thousand people were killed
• 1931 The 1931 China floods or the 1931 Yellow River floods were a series of devastating floods that occurred in the Republic of China. The floods are generally considered first among the deadliest natural disasters ever recorded, and almost certainly the deadliest of the 20th century (when pandemics and famines are discounted). Estimates of the total death toll range from 145,000 to between 3.7 million and 4 million.
• 1932 Soviet famine of 1932–33 begins, millions starve to death as a result of forced collectivization and as part of the government’s effort to break rural resistance to its policies. The Soviet regimes denies the famine and allows millions to die.
• 1933 The Diexi earthquake shakes Mao County, Sichuan, China and kills 9,000 people
• 1934 The 8.0 Mw Nepal–Bihar earthquake strikes Nepal and Bihar with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme), killing an estimated 6,000–10,700 people
• 1935 1935 Quetta earthquake: A 7.1 magnitude earthquake destroys Quetta in modern-day Pakistan, killing 40,000
• 1936 West China Famine: five million die.
• 1937 The Soviet Union commences one of the largest campaigns of the Great Purge, to “eliminate anti-Soviet elements.” Within the following year, at least 724,000 people are killed on order of the troikas, directed by Joseph Stalin. This is an offensive that targets social classes (such as the kulaks), ethnic or racial backgrounds which are seen as non-Russian and Stalin’s personal opponents from the Communist Party and their sympathizers
• 1938 1938 Yellow River flood, created by the Nationalist government in central China breaching embankments during the early stage of the Second Sino-Japanese War in an attempt to halt the rapid advance of Japanese forces. The floods kill at least 400,000, cover and destroy thousands of square kilometers of farmland and shifts the mouth of the Yellow River hundreds of kilometers to the south.
• 1939 The 7.8 Mw Erzincan earthquake shakes eastern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XII (Extreme), causing $20 million in damage, and leaving 32,700–32,968 dead
• 1940 Holocaust: The Nazi concentration camp and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the German concentration camps, opens in occupied Poland near the town of O święcim. From now until January 1945, around 1.1 million people will be killed here
• 1941 The Holocaust: SS–Hauptsturmf ührer Karl Fritzsch first uses the pesticide Zyklon B to execute Soviet prisoners of war en masse at Auschwitz concentration camp; eventually it will be used to kill about 1.2 million people
• 1942 The Holocaust: the Nazi German extermination camp Treblinka II opens in occupied Poland near the village of Treblinka. Between July 23, 1942, and October 1943, around 850,000 people are killed here, more than 800,000 of whom are Jews.
• 1943 WWII: The Soviet Union announces that 22 German divisions have been encircled at Stalingrad, with 175,000 killed and 137,650 captured
• 1944 Battle of Leyte: Tens of thousands of Imperial Japanese Army soldiers are killed in action, in a significant Filipino/Allied military victory.
• 1945 WWII: Atomic bombing of Hiroshima: A United States B-29 Superfortress, the Enola Gay, drops an atomic bomb, codenamed “Little Boy“, on Hiroshima, Japan, at 8:15 a.m. (local time). The atomic bombings are believed to have resulted in between 129,000 and 246,000 deaths
• 1946 Vietnamese riot in Haiphong and clash with French troops. The French cruiser Suffren opens fire, killing 6,000 Vietnamese
• 1947 The new Pakistan Army and Pashtun mercenaries overrun Mirpur in Kashmir, resulting in the death of 20,000 Hindus and Sikhs.
• 1948 The 1948 Ashgabat earthquake kills 110,000
• 1949 The 6.8 ML Ambato earthquake kills more than 5,000 and destroys a number of villages in Ecuador.
• 1950 The 8.6 Mw Assam–Tibet earthquake shakes the region with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme), killing between 1,500–3,300 people
• 1951 Avalanches in the Alps kill 240 and bury 45,000 for a time in Switzerland, Austria and Italy.
• 1952* The 9.0 Mw Severo-Kurilsk earthquake hits the Kamchatka Peninsula of the Soviet Union with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). A tsunami took the lives of more than 2,300 people
• 1953 Heavy massive rain, landslides, and flooding in western and southwestern Japan kill an estimated 2,566, and injure 9,433, mainly at Kizugawa, Wakayama, Kumamoto, and Kitakyushu (June–August).
• 1954 The 6.7 Mw Chlef earthquake shakes northern Algeria with a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme). The shock destroyed Orl éansville, left 1,243–1,409 dead, and 5,000 injured
• 1955 Soviet battleship  Novorossiysk explodes at moorings in Sevastopol Bay, killing 608, the Soviet Union‘s worst naval disaster
• 1956 1956 Hungarian Revolution: More Soviet troops invade Hungary to crush a revolt that started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded, and nearly a quarter million leave the country
• 1957 Heavy rains and mudslides at Isahaya, western Ky ūshū, Japan, kill 992
• 1958 Typhoon Ida kills at least 1,269 in Honsh ū, Japan.
• 1959 Typhoon Vera hits central Honsh ū, Japan, killing an estimated 5,098, injuring another 38,921, and leaving 1,533,000 homeless. Most of the victims and damage are centered in the Nagoya area
• 1960 The 5.7 Mw Agadir earthquake shakes coastal Morocco with a maximum perceived intensity of X ( Extreme ), destroying Agadir, and leaving 12,000 dead and another 12,000 injured
• 1961 A circus tent fire in Niter ói, Brazil kills 323.
• 1962 An avalanche on Nevado Huascar án in Peru causes 4,000 deaths
• 1963 Hurricane Flora, one of the worst Atlantic storms in history, hits Hispaniola and Cuba, killing nearly 7,000 people
• 1964 A cyclone in the Palk Strait destroys the Indian town of Dhanushkodi, killing 1800 people
• 1965 Taal Volcano in Luzon, Philippines, erupts, killing hundreds.
• 1966 Hurricane Inez strikes Hispaniola, leaving thousands dead and tens of thousands homeless in the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
• 1967 Major floods hit Lisbon, Portugal, killing 462.
• 1968 An earthquake in Sicily kills 380 and injures around 1,000.
• 1969 Category 5 Hurricane Camille, the most powerful tropical cyclonic system at landfall in history, hits the Mississippi coast, killing 248 people and causing US$1.5 billion in damage (1969 dollars).
• 1970 1970 Bhola cyclone: A 120-mph (193 km/h) tropical cyclone hits the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 500,000 people (considered the 20th century‘s worst cyclone disaster). It gives rise to the temporary island of New Moore / South Talpatti.
• 1971 A cyclone in the Bay of Bengal, in the Indian state of Odisha, kills 10,000
• 1972 The Burundian Genocide against the Hutu begins; more than 500,000 Hutus die
• 1973 A Royal Jordanian Boeing 707 flight from Jeddah crashes in Kano, Nigeria; 176 people are killed
• 1974 Turkish Airlines Flight 981 travelling from Paris to London crashes in a wood near Paris, killing all 346 aboard. This becomes the deadliest single aircraft accident with no survivors
• 1975 An earthquake with a Richter magnitude of 6.7 kills at least 2,085 in Diyarbak ır and Lice, Turkey.
• 1976 The Tangshan earthquake flattens Tangshan, China, killing 242,769 people, and injuring 164,851
• 1977 A demonstration and coup attempt in Angola takes place. Afterward thousands were killed by the government and Cuban forces.
• 1978 The 7.4 M_w Tabas earthquake affects the city of Tabas, Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). At least 15,000 people were killed.
• 1979 The Machchu-2 dam in Morbi, India, collapses, killing between 1800 and 25000 people in one of the worst ever dam failures.
• 1980 The 7.1 M_w  El Asnam earthquake shakes northern Algeria with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), killing 2,633–5,000 and injuring 8,369–9,000.
• 1981 El Mozote massacre: In El Salvador, army units kill 900 civilians.
• 1982 A Lebanese Christian militia (the Phalange) kill thousands of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in West Beirut, the massacre is a response to the assassination of president-elect, Bachir Gemayel four days earlier.
• 1983 The Black July anti-Tamil riots begin in Sri Lanka, killing between 400 and 3,000. Black July is generally regarded as the beginning of the Sri Lankan Civil War.
• 1984 1983–85 famine in Ethiopia intensifies with renewed drought by mid-year, killing a million people by the end of this year.
• 1985 An 8.0 M_w earthquake strikes Mexico City, killing between 5,000 and 45,000 people and injuring 30,000 more.
• 1986 Yoweri Museveni‘s National Resistance Army Rebel group takes over Uganda after leading a five-year guerrilla war in which up to half a million people are believed to have been killed. They will later use January 26 as the official date to avoid a coincidence of dates with Dictator Idi Amin‘s 1971 coup.
• 1987 In history’s worst peacetime sea disaster, the passenger ferry MV Doña Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker Vector 1 in the Tablas Strait in the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (1,749 official).
• 1988 A ceasefire effectively ends the Iran–Iraq War, with an estimated one million lives lost.
• 1989 The Daulatpur–Saturia tornado, the deadliest tornado ever recorded, kills an estimated 1,300 people in the Dhaka Division of Bangladesh.
• 1990 The 7.4 M_w  Manjil–Rudbar earthquake affects northern Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), killing 35,000–50,000, and injuring 60,000–105,000.
• 1991 A tropical cyclone hits Bangladesh, killing an estimated 138,000 people.
• 1992 El Salvador officials and rebel leaders sign the Chapultepec Peace Accords in Mexico City, ending the 12-year Salvadoran Civil War that claimed at least 75,000 lives. (Or Flores earthquake if this doesn’t count)
• 1993 The 6.2 Mw Latur earthquake shakes Maharashtra, India with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe) killing 9,748 and injuring 30,000
• 1994 The Red Cross estimates that hundreds of thousands of Tutsi have been killed in Rwanda.
• 1995 The 6.9 M_w Great Hanshin earthquake shakes the southern Hy ōgo Prefecture with a maximum Shindo of VII, leaving 5,502–6,434 people dead, and 251,301–310,000 displaced.
• 1996 A devastating category 4 cyclone strikes Andhra Pradesh, India. The storm surge sweeps fishing villages out to sea, over 2,000 people die. 95% of the crops are completely destroyed.
• 1997 The 7.3 Mw Qayen earthquake shakes eastern Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). At least 1,567 were killed and 2,300 were injured
• 1998 The Second Congo War begins; 3,900,000 people are killed before it ends in 2003, making it the bloodiest war, to date, since World War II.
• 1999 The 7.6 Mw İzmit earthquake shakes northwestern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), leaving 17,118–17,127 dead and 43,953–50,000 injured.
• 2000 Torrential rains in Africa lead to the worst flooding in Mozambique in 50 years, which lasts until March and kills 800 people
• •floods
• 2001 The 7.7 Mw Gujarat earthquake shakes Western India with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme), leaving 13,805–20,023 dead and about 166,800 injured
• 2002 The Senegalese passenger ferry Joola capsizes in a storm off the coast of the Gambia, killing 1,863 people.
• •boats sinking
• 2003 The 6.6 Mw Bam earthquake shakes southeastern Iran with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), killing an estimated 30,000 people.
• 2004 The 9.1–9.3 Mw Indian Ocean earthquake shakes northern Sumatra with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). One of the largest observed tsunamis follows, affecting coastal areas of Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, killing over 200,000 people.
• 2005 The 7.6 Mw Kashmir earthquake strikes Azad Kashmir, Pakistan and nearby areas with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe), killing more than 79,000 people and displacing several million more.
• 2006 The 6.4 Mw Yogyakarta earthquake shakes central Java with an MSK intensity of IX (Destructive), leaving more than 5,700 dead and 37,000 injured
• 2007 Over 15,000 people are believed to have been killed after Cyclone Sidr hits Bangladesh.
• 2008 Cyclone Nargis passes through Myanmar, killing over 100,000 people.
• 2009 An 7.6 Mw earthquake strikes Sumatra, Indonesia with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe), leaving at least 1,110 people dead.
• 2010 A 7.0-magnitude earthquake occurs in Haiti, devastating the nation’s capital, Port-au-Prince. With a confirmed death toll over 316,000, it is the tenth deadliest on record.
• 2011 A 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit the east of Japan, killing 15,840 and leaving another 3,926 missing. Tsunami warnings are issued in 50 countries and territories. Emergencies are declared at four nuclear power plants affected by the quake.
• 2012 Typhoon Bopha, known as “Pablo” in the Philippines, kills at least 1,067 with around 838 people still missing. The typhoon causes considerable damage in the island of Mindanao.
• 2013 Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones on record, hits the Philippines and Vietnam, causing devastation with at least 6,241 dead.
• 2014 The Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa begins, infecting at least 28,616 people and killing at least 11,310 people, the most severe both in terms of numbers of infections and casualties.
• 2015 A magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes Nepal and causes 8,857 deaths in Nepal, 130 in India, 27 in China and 4 in Bangladesh with a total of 9,018 deaths
• 2016  2016 Nagorno-Karabakh clashes: Clashes occur along the Nagorno-Karabakh line of contact with the Artsakh Defense Army, backed by the Armenian Armed Forces, on one side and the Azerbaijani Armed Forces on the other. The US State Department estimates that a total of 350 people have been killed in the clashes, which have been defined as “the worst” since the 1994 ceasefire.
• 2017 Just two weeks after Hurricane Irma struck the Caribbean, Hurricane Maria strikes similar areas, making landfall on Dominica as a Category 5 hurricane, and Puerto Rico as a Category 4 hurricane. Maria caused at least 3,000 deaths and damages estimated in excess of $91.6 billion (2017 USD)
• 2018 A magnitude 7.5 earthquake hits Sulawesi, Indonesia, causing a tsunami that kills at least 4,340 people and injures more than 10,679 others
• 2019 A report by the Multi-Sector Epidemic Response Committee (CMRE) indicates that 2,231 people have died so far in the 2018–20 Kivu Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
• 2020 COVID-19 pandemic: The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 passes 65 million worldwide, with the global death toll exceeding 1.5 million. Figures reflect that, in the last week, over 10,000 people worldwide have died on average every day, with one death every nine seconds. According to the World Health Organization, COVID-19 had caused more deaths in 2020 than tuberculosis in 2019, as well as four times the number of deaths than malaria.