Disaster history

The growing cost of disasters

2012-02-05T10:22:00.000Z

The Economist ran a fascinating piece in its January 14 edition on the growing cost of disasters. Five of the ten most expensive disasters in history have happened in the last four years, and a leading reinsurer, Munich Re, reckoned 2011 was the most costly year in its history.

The most expensive disaster ever is last year’s Japanese tsunami, followed by Japan’s Kobe earthquake of 1995, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Most expensive does not mean highest number of casualties. The Japanese tsunami cost fewer than 16,000 lives, Kobe 6,400 and Katrina 1,300, compared with a quarter of a million killed in the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, and perhaps a similar number in the Haiti earthquake of 2010.

One reason for the growing cost of disasters is that there are more and more human beings around to suffer losses. The population of hurricane-belt state Florida, for example, has risen from 2.8m in 1950 to 19m now.

And overall human beings are getting richer so there are more things to be destroyed, while sometimes not enough thought is given to where development takes place. Thailand’s growing industries, for instance, have been located in areas known to be vulnerable to flooding.

Football disasters

2012-02-02T10:02:00.000Z

At least 74 people have been killed and hundreds injured in a riot after a football match between two of Egypt’s top teams - Port Said’s al-Masry and Cairo’s al-Ahly (flag pictured above). Al-Masry won the game, and at the final whistle their fans invaded the pitch and attacked rival players and supporters, while part of the stadium was set on fire.

Although some rioters were said to have been armed with knives and metal bars, most injuries appear to have been caused by a stampede of spectators desperate to escape from the ground.

Some observers are claiming that the normal police presence for a match of this kind had been scaled down, and there are theories that there may have been some kind of concerted attack on al-Ahly fans, who are seen as having been in the forefront of recent protests against the security forces.

The world’s worst football disaster came in Lima in 1964, when a goal was disallowed in the last minute of an Olympic qualifying match between Peru and Argentina. More than 300 people died as a riot in the stadium spread into the centre of the city. There too, many of those killed were crushed trying to escape the trouble.

(See also my blogs of February 6 and March 30, 2009, January 2, 2010.)

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 20 - the Fall of Singapore

2012-01-29T07:19:00.000Z

For Winston Churchill, it was ‘the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history’. Before World War Two, Britain had spent the then vast sum of £60m turning the island of Singapore into a supposedly impregnable fortress at the end of the Malayan peninsula – at that time also a British colony.

On December 8, 1941, the Japanese landed at the northern end of the peninsula, and though they were heavily outnumbered, they fought their way down it remorselessly, until by the end of January 1942, they had conquered the whole peninsula without the British scoring a single significant victory.

Now the defenders blew up the causeway that linked Singapore to the mainland, but on February 8, the Japanese launched an invasion. Just as they had in Malaya, they outfought and outmanoeuvred the defending forces, using their air supremacy to deadly effect.

Just a week later, 85,000 British and British Empire forces surrendered to the 35,000 Japanese invaders. The Japanese had lost only 3,500 men in the conquest of Malaya and Singapore – then the greatest city in south-east Asia.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 19 - Dunkirk

2012-01-24T09:53:00.000Z

Just 21 years after the end of World War One (see my blog of Jan 22), the British army was back in France to fight the Germans. This time the problem was not a bloody stalemate, but the speed and daring of enemy forces who completely outmanoeuvred the Allies.

In May 1940, German panzers attacked through the Ardennes, and advanced 200 miles in just 10 days, reaching the Channel coast, and cutting off the British Expeditionary Force in northern France. There followed a series of desperate rearguard actions as Lord Gort’s army tried to secure a line of retreat to the ports.

Many French and British soldiers fought bravely, as Boulogne was surrendered, then Calais fell, while Belgium’s capitulation left a dangerous gap in the Allied line. In the end, Dunkirk was the only port left, and even that was under constant German attack.

There then followed the most successful part of the whole operation, with nearly 200,000 British and 140,000 French and Belgian troops rescued from the beaches. But Churchill recognised the campaign overall had been a ‘colossal military disaster’. The BEF had lost almost all its equipment, and 66,000 men had been killed, wounded or captured.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 18 - the Somme

2012-01-22T11:48:00.000Z

On Saturday, 1 July, 1916, British, British Empire and French soldiers launched a huge offensive on the Somme. By the end of that day, nearly 20,000 British soldiers were dead, and 36,000 wounded – the worst toll for a single day in the history of the British Army.

When rotten weather and cloying mud finally brought an end to the Battle of the Somme in November, Britain and the British Empire had suffered an almost unimaginable 400,000 casualties, the French had lost about 200,000, and the Germans perhaps 450,000.

Of all the disasters featured in this series, this is the only one sometimes claimed as a victory. It is said that this bloody attrition fatally drained German resources and paved the way for the Allies to finally win the war two years later.

The ground gained was negligible. Nowhere did the Allied line advance more than six miles, and many objectives due to be taken on the first day were never captured, nor did the Allies liberate a single town or gain a single strategically significant point.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 17 - Gallipoli

2012-01-17T11:44:00.000Z

The attack on Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula by Britain and France in 1915 was conceived as a way of getting round the bloody stalemate of the Western Front, which was devouring soldiers’ lives at an almost unimaginable rate.

The initial idea was for warships to breeze through the Dardanelles straits into the Sea of Marmara, threaten Constantinople and force Germany’s Turkish allies to pull out of the war, but as the navy failed to make progress, it was decided that a major land invasion would also be needed.

Suffering uninspired leadership and handicapped by extremely difficult terrain, this quickly degenerated into a murderous deadlock that looked disconcertingly similar to what was happening in Flanders.

After 11 months, with 38,000 British and British Empire troops killed, the invasion was abandoned. It was feared that the withdrawal would entail heavy losses, but, in fact, this proved the most successful part of the operation. A brilliant campaign of deception involving rifles firing automatically from deserted trenches, and noisy empty supply trucks running back and forth at night, enabled the pull-out to be made without any significant casualties.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 16 - 'Black Week' of the Boer War

2012-01-13T10:18:00.000Z

Most people in Britain thought the Boer War would be a walkover, but the British commander, Sir Redvers Buller, was less sure. He had fought alongside the Boers against the Zulus, and knew how tough and resourceful they were.

Buller was right to be worried. During the last month of the nineteenth century, the British lost three battles in a week. First came Stormberg where they marched through the night to attack Boer positions, got lost, then were shelled by their own artillery, and withdrew in considerable disorder.

On December 10, 1899, Lt-Gen the third baron Methuen decided to try his luck at Magersfontein. He believed the Boers were holding the top of a line of hills, but in fact they were dug in in hidden trenches beneath. Under their deadly rifle fire, the British again withdrew in disorder with heavy losses.

Finally on December 15, Buller himself led 20,000 men against about 8,000 Boers at Colenso in an attempt to cross the Tugela River. Again the attack was muffed, and the British had to retreat having lost 143 men killed and about 1,000 wounded or captured, while the Boers were said to have suffered only 8 men killed.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 15 - Khartoum

2012-01-12T17:30:00.000Z

General Charles George Gordon was one of the loosest cannons ever to infiltrate the highest echelons of the British army. The peace-loving Prime Minister, William Gladstone, should really have known better, but in January 1884 he hired Gordon to organise the evacuation of Egyptian garrisons from the Sudan.

In Egypt, Britain called the shots, but Sudan was a greyer area, and for more than two years, a local leader known as the ‘Mahdi’ had been on a mission to purify Islam and take over the country.

Instead of evacuating the capital, Khartoum, Gordon mounted a dramatic stand that lasted for 342 days, at the end of which the general and many others in the city were killed. A British rescue expedition arrived just two days later, but beat a hasty retreat before the Mahdi’s overwhelming numbers.

Gordon’s ordeal was followed intently by people all over the world, and when it ended, it was Gladstone who got the blame. His previous nickname – G.O.M. – ‘Grand Old Man’ was modified to M.O.G. – ‘Murderer of Gordon’.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 14 - the Battle of Isandlwana

2011-12-19T18:59:00.000Z

King Cetshwayo, ruler of the Zulus in the late 1870's, was a confirmed Anglophile, saying he revered Queen Victoria like a mother, but some unscrupulous expansionists in London and South Africa wanted to get their hands on his lands and in 1879 they managed to foment a war.

An army of 7,000 crossed into Zululand, but the British commander, Lord Chelmsford, was afraid the enemy would try to avoid giving battle, and he kept dividing up his forces. On January 22, he left behind just 1,250 soldiers at his main camp at Isandlwana.

Astonishingly, the Zulus had managed to hide an army of 20,000 or more, and they fell on the British, who had neglected to fortify their position, and virtually annihilated them. When the news reached England, people thought at first that it must be a hoax – a British army with modern rifles and artillery destroyed by tribesmen armed mainly with spears!

But Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli had to admit to Parliament that there had indeed been a ‘terrible military disaster’. The full story is in Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters, and there are only five shopping days to Christmas!

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 13 - the Charge of the Light Brigade

2011-12-17T07:45:00.000Z

It was probably the most famous blunder in British military history. In 1854, Britain, France and Turkey were fighting the Russians in the Crimean War. Early on October 25, the Russians began the Battle of Balaclava to try and break the allies’ fragile supply chain.

‘Two such fools could hardly be picked out of the British army,’ was one soldier’s verdict on the cavalry commanders, Lords Lucan and Cardigan, but it was a confused order by the commander-in-chief, Lord Raglan, that sent the Light Brigade, considered by many to be the finest light cavalry in the world, on a suicidal charge against Russian guns along the 'Valley of Death'.

Not only did the brigade have to endure fire from the guns they were attacking, there was also enemy artillery on either side of them. Thanks to their courage, they managed to capture a few of the guns, but they were soon driven off by the Russians’ superior numbers, and then all that was left was a painful retreat back through enemy gunfire.

Out of the 600 men who set off, 300 were killed, wounded or captured. After the charge, the battle petered out, but it had an important consequence – the British lost control of their main supply route, condemning them to a winter of shortage, sickness and death.

UK and Europe - how the relationship works

2011-12-14T15:43:00.001Z

Stage 1

Europe: ’ We are planning this important new project.’

UK: ‘It will never happen.’

Stage 2

It happens.

UK: ‘All right. It has happened, but it will never work.’

Stage 3

It works.

UK: ‘All right. It has happened and it works, but we do not want anything to do with it.’

Stage 4

UK: ‘Please may we join?’

*A Facebook page I have just written on Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters. http://www.facebook.com/notes/the-history-press/a-disastrous-retreat-by-john-withington/10150453234788631

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 12 - Afghanistan

2011-12-12T13:09:00.000Z

The British government had no quarrel with the people of Afghanistan, but was worried about the presence of influential foreigners. It decided to get rid of the existing government, and impose one it liked. Then it compiled a dodgy dossier to drum up support for a war.

Any of this sound familiar? It was what happened in Afghanistan in 1839, when the foreigners were Russians, not al-Qaeda. At first, everything went swimmingly. The popular ruler, Dost Mohammed, was replaced by Amir Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk, who the Afghans had thrown out 30 years before, whose main interest was his enormous harem, and who dismissed his new subjects as ‘dogs’.

After the Brits had been in control for a couple of years, the Afghans rose up, and in January 1842, the occupiers said that as they were there only for the benefit of the Afghan people, if the Afghan people did not want them, then they would leave.

There followed the most disastrous retreat in the history of the British army. Around 16,000 British soldiers, Indian sepoys and assorted camp followers began the 90 mile journey to Jalalabad. At every pass, they were ambushed by Afghan tribesmen, while cold, hunger and exhaustion gnawed at them. A week later, just one solitary army surgeon reached Jalalabad.

Dost Mohammed once again became ruler and proved himself a true friend of the British Empire until his death in 1863. But he always remained baffled by the invasion, once telling a British visitor: ‘I cannot understand why the rulers of so great an empire should have come to deprive me of my poor and barren country.’

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 11 - the Battle of New Orleans

2011-12-11T12:06:00.001Z

The year 1815 is celebrated in British history for the great victory at Waterloo, but there was also a great defeat – at New Orleans on January 8. Britain and the infant United States had fallen out over Britain’s press-ganging of American sailors, her attempts to impose a blockade against Napoleonic France, and American territorial ambitions in Canada.

In fact, the battle should never have been fought, as the two combatants had made peace at Ghent on Christmas Eve 1814, but the news had still not reached America. If it had, the British would probably have been disappointed. They had 8,000 professional soldiers, many of whom had helped defeat the French in the Peninsular War, and fancied themselves to rout General Andrew Jackson’s untrained frontiersmen.

The American ranks, though, were packed with sharpshooters, and Jackson had constructed his defences well and sited his artillery very effectively. When the British charged, they were cut down in dozens.

The British commander, Edward Pakenham was killed, as was another British general, and within 25 minutes, the Redcoats had to withdraw, having lost 2,000 killed, wounded or captured against just 300 casualties on the American side.

*A review of Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters from Kent on Sunday.

http://www.kentnews.co.uk/news/how_kent_s_military_disasters_changed_the_course_of_history_1_1147200

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 10 - The Castlebar Races

2011-12-08T17:37:00.000Z

The Irish Rebellion of 1798 was on its last legs when a mini French army of just over 1,000 men, led by animal skin dealer turned revolutionary general Joseph Humbert, landed near Killala in County Mayo.

Skilfully avoiding British forces, the French plus a few Irish recruits they had managed to pick up, found themselves early on the morning of August 27 before the walls of Castlebar, County Mayo’s county town, where they finally faced the enemy.

It should have been no contest. The British had cavalry and artillery with a range of 1,000 yards. The French had only muskets effective at 100, but they managed to launch a ferocious bayonet charge.

Was it the fact that a new British commander had arrived just hours before the attack? Was it that many in their ranks secretly sympathised with the rebel cause? Whatever the reason, the British force fled from the field with such speed and enthusiasm that the encounter was dubbed ‘the Castlebar Races.’ The full story is in Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters.

Shome mishtake shurely?

2011-11-28T18:34:00.000Z

It's not often the Economist gets something wrong, but on the cover of its Nov 18 edition, it says: 'Nuclear Iran, anxious Israel'. Surely that should be: 'Nuclear Israel, anxious Iran'?

*You can follow me now on Twitter @john_withington.

* Authoritative new newsletter on air defence from eminent defence consultant (and my son) Thomas Withington just out. If you want to subscribe or comment, contact Thomas at ChainHomeHigh@gmail.com

You can also follow Thomas on Twitter at #ChainHomeHigh.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 9 - Surrender at Yorktown 1781

2011-11-25T07:32:00.000Z

By the summer of 1781, the British were confident of winning the American War of Independence. George Washington’s rebel army was in a state of mutiny, and it was only thanks to his French allies, that he had been able to keep hostilities going. Now the French were saying they would be pulling out at the end of the year.

The British had two armies, one in the north and one in the south. The southern force under Lord Cornwallis had been given the job of fortifying a base for the Royal Navy at Yorktown in Virginia.

By accident or design, the rebels had led the British commander-in-chief, Sir Henry Clinton, to believe that they were going to attack the northern army in New York. Instead, on September 28, they moved 16,000 men to Virginia, trapping Cornwallis at Yorktown.

For three weeks, the British commander held out, but by then with sickness reducing his effective strength to just over 3,000, and enemy artillery flattening his defences, Cornwallis surrendered, and four months later the House of Commons voted to abandon the war.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 8 - the Siege of Cartagena de Indias

2011-11-24T10:19:00.000Z

The Spaniards often call it ‘the Defeat of the British Armada’. In 1741, during the wonderfully-named ‘War of Jenkins’ Ear’, the British dispatched the biggest force they had ever sent to the West Indies – 10,000 men and more than 20 ships - to join the fleet already out there under Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon.

The objective was to capture Spain’s fortress of Cartagena de Indias in modern-day Colombia, but right from the start, things went wrong. The army commander, Lord Cathcart, and 600 of his men died from sickness on the way out.

Then once the force arrived, a feud broke out between Cathcart’s replacement, the inexperienced Sir Thomas Wentworth, and Vernon, while the Spanish defences were cleverly organised by Admiral Blas de Lezo, nicknamed ‘half-man’, who had lost an arm, a leg and an eye in the service of his country.

A number of British assaults failed, while sickness continued to take a terrible toll. When only 1,700 of the 10,000 who left Britain were still fit for duty, the assault was called off, and the country’s first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, was forced to resign.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 7 - The Second Battle of the Medway

2011-11-23T10:46:00.000Z

In 1667, England was in the middle of an austerity programme. Tax receipts had been hammered by two major disasters, the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London of 1666. One government cut involved laying up the Royal Navy’s great ships, and paying off most of their crews.

Unfortunately, there was a war with the Dutch going on at the time, and at the beginning of June, their commander, Admiral De Ruyter, detached a task force from his fleet with the mission of attacking the pride of the navy in the Medway.

The English had sunk ships in the river, and stretched a chain across it, and they had guns ashore to stop the progress of the enemy, but unfortunately there was a shortage of gunners, supplies had been pilfered, and the Dutch came on regardless.

They set three warships alight, and captured and took away two others, including the 82-gun Royal Charles – the pride of the navy, the ship that had brought Charles II back from exile. It was, considered the diarist John Evelyn, ‘a dishonour never to be wiped off’, and was perhaps Britain’s greatest ever naval humiliation.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 6 - the Battle of Castillon 1453

2011-11-22T08:29:00.000Z

The Hundred Years War had been going on since 1337. It is often described as a conflict between England and France, but that is not quite true. In fact, the English kings ruled a lot of France when the war began, including Aquitaine in the south, and Ponthieu in the north, and many ‘Frenchmen’ served in ‘English’ armies.

By 1453, the French king Charles VII had virtually driven the English out, but many people in Aquitaine wanted them back, and so an army under England’s best general, John Talbot, earl of Shrewsbury – the ‘English Achilles’, went out to try to exploit their discontent.

On July 16, he set off to relieve the town of Castillon to which the French were laying siege. He came upon a small French force and routed them. Then a messenger from Castillon told him they had seen clouds of dust coming from the main French camp.

Thinking the enemy were beating a hasty retreat, Talbot launched an attack even though many of his troops had not yet arrived. In fact, only the camp followers had been leaving, and French artillery cut down the English mercilessly, inflicting a decisive defeat and virtually ending the war.

*There’s much more on Castillon in my BFBS interview:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIpb64ZpBno

The Aberdeen Press and Journal published a piece on Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters on November 16, and the Tamworth Herald on November 17.

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 5 - the Battle of Hastings 1066

2011-11-21T12:00:00.000Z

In that hilarious book, 1066 and All That, 1066 was selected as one of the only two ‘memorable’ dates in English history. And rightly so. The Battle of Hastings marked one of its cleanest breaks with an entire Anglo-Saxon ruling class removed to be replaced by Normans imported by William the Conqueror.

And yet the battle itself was a close-run thing. The army of the English king Harold was exhausted and depleted, having had to race up north to defeat another claimant to the throne, Harald Hardrada of Norway, and then race back south again.

Even so, the Norman cavalry could at first make little impact on the Saxon shield-wall, and when William was knocked off his horse, a rumour swept through his army that he was dead, and some leading commanders called for a retreat.

William had to win the battle, while a draw would have been good enough for the English, so there followed a race against time to gain a decisive victory before dusk brought an end to the fighting. For the full story, see Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters, the History Press.

*Review of my last book – A Disastrous History of the World. http://oldsaltbooks.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/the-four-horsemen-seem-to-be-continually-in-the-saddle/

Britain's 20 Worst Military Disasters 4 - the Anglo-Saxon Conquest

2011-11-18T20:02:00.000Z

Germanic raiders who became known collectively as ‘Saxons’ had been attacking England since the 3^rd century, but after the Romans left at the beginning of the 5^th century, one of the Britons’ leaders, named Vortigern, had the bright idea of hiring Saxons as mercenaries to fight the Picts and Scots who had been raiding northern England.

So in 449, the brothers Hengest and Horsa arrived in Kent. They were very successful against the Picts and Scots, but when the Britons tried to defy their increasing demands for land, the Saxons fought and heavily defeated their employers, perhaps at Aylesford in Kent in 455.

Two years later, the Britons suffered an even more decisive defeat, perhaps at Crayford. They are said to have lost 4,000 killed, while the survivors ‘fled to London in great terror’.

In the late fifth or early sixth century, the Britons had a series of successes, perhaps under King Arthur, but the year 577 saw another crushing defeat at Dyrham, near Bath, where three British kings were killed, and by 600 most of what had been Roman Britain was in Saxon hands.

*This is an interview with me on British Forces Broadcasting about my new book – Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIpb64ZpBno

Britain's worst military disasters 3 - Mons Graupius AD 83 or 84

2011-11-16T08:10:00.000Z

We tend to think of the Roman conquest of Britain as extending only as far as Hadrian’s Wall, but, in fact, in AD 83 or 84 (historians cannot agree on the date), a Roman army won a stunning victory perhaps as far north as Aberdeenshire.

Having subdued Wales and the north of England, the Roman governor Agricola had advanced up through Scotland, but found it difficult to bring the Caledonian tribes to battle, Eventually, though, about 30,000 of them confronted him at ‘Mons Graupius’ which many modern-day historians believe to be in the Bennachie range, north-west of Aberdeen.

The Caledonian vanguard was on the plain, with the rear stretching up Mons Graupius. Agricola held his legionaries in reserve, and sent in his ‘barbarian’ auxiliaries to close with the enemy. Roman armies were at their most effective in this close, hand-to-hand combat, and they broke through the Caledonians and started to advance up the hill.

The tribesmen fought bravely, but when Agricola sent in his cavalry, they were routed, and the Roman historian Tacitus put their losses at 10,000 against just 360 for the Romans. It was too late in the campaigning season, though, for Agricola to advance any further, and his troops withdrew to forts further south. Never again would the Romans penetrate this far north.

*Article about Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters in the Bath Chronicle. http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/6th-century-battle-near-Bath-new-book-Britain-s/story-13843963-detail/story.html

British military disasters 2 - the defeat of Boudicca AD 60 or 61

2011-11-15T07:45:00.002Z

Less than 20 years after they won the Battle of the Medway, the Romans had managed to provoke a large-scale British revolt by their arrogance. After their ally, the East Anglian king Prasutagus died, they seized all his property, and when his family protested, they raped his daughters and flogged his widow, Boudicca.

She rose in revolt, attracting the support of other tribes the Romans had upset, and burned down Colchester, London and St Albans. Then she headed north to try to destroy the army led by the Roman governor Suetonius.

Somewhere along Watling Street, now the A5, probably in the West Midlands, she came upon them. The Romans numbered around 10,000, while Boudicca’s host was estimated by some at nearly a quarter of a million, though many of these were women and children who had tagged along to see the enemy defeated.

Suetoninus, though, chose his ground very carefully, packing his men into a narrow gorge protected on either side by forest. First they hurled their javelins at the Britons advancing uphill, then they pushed forward in their famous v-shaped wedge and routed the enemy, killing them in their thousands. Boudicca took poison, and the revolt collapsed.

British Military Disasters 1- the Battle of the Medway AD43

2011-11-14T07:58:00.000Z

Over the next few weeks, I am going to be blogging about the military disasters featured in my new book – Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters (The History Press).

According to some estimates, 40,000 Roman legionaries and auxiliaries were confronted by 80,000 Ancient Britons as they tried to cross the Medway in AD43. If those figures are right, this would be the second biggest battle ever fought in Britain.

The Britons were taken by surprise when a detachment of auxiliaries managed to swim across the river and start attacking their horses. Taking advantage of the chaos this caused, a force of legionaries under the future emperor Vespasian crossed on the opposite flank.

Even so, the British resisted doggedly and the battle went into a second day, something highly unusual for those times, and perhaps testimony to the large number of men involved. On day two, the Romans used boats and a pontoon bridge to reinforce their bridgehead, but in a determined counter-attack the British captured a number of officers and for a time looked as though they might win.

Eventually, though, the Romans’ superior organisation won the day, and soon after the Roman emperor Claudius came over to take the surrender of 11 British kings, laying the foundations for nearly 400 years of Roman rule.

My new book

2011-11-05T13:27:00.000Z

My new book, Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disaster: from the Roman Conquest to the Fall of Singapore, is just out. Not surprisingly everyone in Britain seems to know about our great victories – Crecy, Agincourt, Blenheim, Trafalgar, Waterloo, El Alamein, etc, but when you have fought as many wars as the British, it’s not surprising that there’ve also been plenty of disasters.

The book looks at famous ones, such as Hastings, and Yorktown, which sealed the loss of the American colonies, but it also tells the story of the forgotten defeats – like Castillon, the last battle of the 100 Years War.

Some, like the first Battle of the Medway, had far-reaching consequences, paving the way for the Roman conquest. Others, like the second Battle of the Medway sixteen hundred years later, had little long-term impact, but was still regarded as ‘a dishonour never to be wiped off’.

There are stories of defeats by Afghans, Americans and Zulus, who had all been dismissed back home as no match for our boys, and of brilliant retreats that prevented even worse disasters as at Gallipoli and Dunkirk.

Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters ISBN: 9780752461977 is published by the History Press, and is offered for sale on their website

http://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/products/Britains-20-Worst-Military-Disasters.aspx

Unlucky church

2011-10-30T12:40:00.000Z

I was in Hamburg recently, and managed to pop into the wonderfully light and airy St Michael’s Church. The inside reminded me a bit of St Martin-in-the-fields in London. Originally constructed in 1647, it was destroyed by fire 103 years later after being struck by lightning.

It was rebuilt, but in 1906 it was burned down again, this time while building work was going on. Then it was severely damaged by Allied bombing during World War Two.

In July 1943, Hamburg was hit by what was then the most devastating raid of the war. The RAF started a firestorm which reduced eight square miles of the city to blackened ruins. About 42,000 people were killed, and Hitler’s minister for war production, Albert Speer, told the Fuehrer that if another three or four cities were bombed like that, it would mean ‘the end of the war’.

* Here’s a new review of my book Disaster! ‘as much fun as any horror film’ – I take that as a compliment.

http://www.readprint.com/work-105455/Disaster-A-History-of-Earthquakes-Floods-Plagues-and-Other-Catastrophes-John-Withington

And this is me on the tv in the 1970’s:-

http://www.macearchive.org/archive.html?Title=23745

Turkish earthquake

2011-10-29T14:40:00.000+01:00

Turkey’s second major earthquake of the year has now claimed at least 575 lives. It struck the eastern town of Ercis, which has nearly 100,000 inhabitants, on Sunday. More than 180 people have been pulled from the wreckage, including a 13 year old boy in the early hours of yesterday, but now hopes of finding anyone else alive are fading.

Tens of thousands of people have been made homeless, and the nights are freezing cold. Most of those living in the region are Kurds – an ethnic minority that has been battling to have its own country - and the Turkish government had been criticised for what some saw as a sluggish initial response.

I was in Istanbul at the time of the last earthquake in May, which struck the western Kutahya region, about 100 miles away, killing two people. Some people in Istanbul said they felt the tremor, though I did not.

Perhaps the worst earthquake in Turkey’s history was the one that destroyed the famous city of Antioch in 526, killing up to 300,000 (see my blog of Jan 22, 2010). The deadliest of recent years was the Izmit quake of 1999, which caused at least 17,000 deaths in the area, about 40 miles from Istanbul.

Disaster relief funds - record for a famine

2011-10-16T10:31:00.000+01:00

Britain’s Disasters Emergency Committee has announced that it has raised a record sum to help famine victims in Somalia. The £72 million donated is the highest ever for a food crisis, and the only disasters of any kind to have attracted a bigger response were the Boxing Day tsunami of 2004 and the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

DEC’s chief executive said the money had saved many people’s lives, but that the situation produced by a devastating drought remained ‘grave’, and that help was not reaching many of those in greatest need.

Relief work has been hampered by the militant Islamist group, al-Shabab, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda (see my blog of July 21), but now rains have revived pasture for livestock in some areas, and some crops are being harvested.

Aid agencies had been afraid that the actions of Somali pirates might discourage people from making donations. They have kidnapped a number of foreign tourists, including a 56 year old British woman, Judith Tebbutt, who was abducted from 25 miles inside Kenya. The pirates murdered her husband.

Costa da Morte

2011-10-08T15:48:00.002+01:00

Just back from the beautiful coast of Galicia in north-west Spain. Below you can see me at the memorial to the many ships wrecked off the ominously named Costa da Morte. It got its name in 1890 when a Royal Navy torpedo cruiser, HMS Serpent, came to grief here.

She was en route from Plymouth to Sierra Leone on November 10, 1890 when in fog and drizzle, she lost her way. Then a fierce storm broke and the ship was dashed against the treacherous rocks, though at first the crew seemed to think they had just been hit by a very powerful wave, and there was a delay in closing watertight doors.

Just three survivors from the crew of 175 managed to reach the shore and sound the alarm in a nearby village. A search party went out but was able to find only bodies. The British government later sent letters of thanks to local people, and the mayor was presented with a shotgun and the parish priest a gold watch.

It is said that the survivors owed their lives to wearing lifebelts, which was unusual at the time, and that the incident led to their being used much more widely.

Pic by Anne Clements. See her other lovely work http://www.flickr.com/photos/clemypix/page1/

Thailand floods

2011-10-07T18:53:00.000+01:00

More than 250 people have now been killed in the monsoon floods that have been affecting Thailand for the last two months. Twenty-eight provinces have suffered, and more than two million people have had their lives disrupted.

These are said to be the worst floods in half a century, and the Prime Minister has warned that parts of Bangkok will soon be under water. In some areas, people have been told to beware of crocodiles which have escaped from farms.

Last year saw monsoon floods across 38 provinces of Thailand, and more than 230 people were drowned, while millions more lost their homes and their livelihoods.

This years’s floods have also killed 167 people in Cambodia, and another 40 in Vietnam and Laos.

Disasters - blaming the experts

2011-10-03T08:15:00.000+01:00

Six scientists from the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology and the former deputy chief of the Civil Protection Agency, Bernardo De Bernardinis , have gone on trial for manslaughter in Perugia in connection with the earthquake that hit the medieval city of L’Aquila in 2009, killing 308 people, and destroying thousands of buildings.

For months, people living in and around the city had been experiencing earth tremors, but on March 31, 2009, Dr De Bernardinis told them there was ‘no danger’. Six days later the earthquake struck.

The prosecution claims the seven were negligent in their assessment of the risks, and that the reassuring comments made by Dr De Bernardinis and a vulcanologist resulted in the deaths of people who would otherwise have left their homes after two tremors on successive nights just before the quake.

Some scientists have said that the case will have a ‘chilling effect’, and might deter them from sharing their expertise with the public for fear of the consequences if things go wrong. (See also my blog of April 6, 2009.)

Malaria - a glimmer of hope?

2011-09-23T10:39:00.000+01:00

Some hopeful signs from a new anti-malaria vaccine. Preliminary trials had begun in Burkina Faso to test its safety, but it soon became clear that children who had been given the injection were getting a high degree of protection.

The results are described as ‘most encouraging’, and a bigger trial is about to start in Mali. About 100 different vaccines have been tried against the disease, and this one, developed by the Pasteur Institute in Paris, is only the second to have shown promise.

The Burkina Faso study involved only 45 children, but the incidence of malaria was three or four time lower among those who were given the vaccine. Eight hundred children will be enrolled in the new trial in Mali.

Malaria still kills around 1 million people a year, 90 per cent of them in Africa, and most of these are young children. (See also my blogs of 11 April, 30 May, 24 Sept and 21 Oct, 2009.)

Animal survivors - tales of dogs, pigs and clones

2011-09-22T10:17:00.000+01:00

Here’s a strong contender for this year’s most bizarre disaster story. Chinese scientists have cloned a wonder pig that survived the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, which killed more than 90,000 people.

Zhu Jiangqiang, or "Strong-Willed Pig", survived in his sty under the rubble for 36 days on a diet of charcoal and rainwater. Scientists in the city of Shenzhen have cloned six piglets from his DNA. They are all said to look like him, with a distinctive birthmark between the eyes. It’s planned to send them off to a museum and a genetic institute.

During the Japanese tsunami in March, as the owners of a pet dachshund prepared to seek safety in the hills inland, the terrified dog raced off towards the sea. They were heart-broken and assumed that was the last they would see of him.

But a week later, he was found safe a mile inland. How did he survive? No one knows.

More floods in China

2011-09-21T09:55:00.000+01:00

Floods are said to be the most common natural disaster to afflict mankind, and China has suffered many, including perhaps the deadliest natural disaster in history. (See my blog of June 20.)

Now a week of heavy rain has brought the deaths of at least 57 people and driven a million from their homes. The flooding in Sichuan is the worst since records began in 1847, and the provinces of Henan and Shaanxi have also been hit.

More than 120,000 houses have been destroyed, along with many crops. Many of those who died were in a brick factory and the dormitory for its workers that were buried by a landslide in the city of Xi’an.

Last year’s floods were the worst in China for a decade, and cost 4,000 lives, while so far this year more than 350 people have been killed in 12 provinces.

London's deadliest post-war fire

2011-09-20T16:59:00.000+01:00

New light has been cast on the deadliest fire in London since World War Two, and one of the worst mass killings in British history. In the early hours of August 16, 1980, fire ripped through two illegal clubs in Denmark Street - ‘Tin Pan Alley’ – just off Charing Cross Road.

The second floor housed a gambling den, while the first floor was a club where salsa music – virtually unknown in London in those days – attracted lots of South American expatriates. A disgruntled customer who had been refused admission, poured petrol into the building and set fire to it. The disc jockey was one of those killed, as he tried to save his record collection.

There were no proper fire escapes, and with much of the building made of wood, it went up in no time. A total of 37 people were killed, and in May 1981, a 42 year old man was gaoled for life for causing the fire.

Matt Rendell has come up with some fascinating new details about the disaster in his new history of salsa in Britain. For the full story, see Salsa for People Who Probably Shouldn’t just published by Mainstream.

Pakistan flooded again

2011-09-19T10:51:00.001+01:00

Just as they did around this time last year, devastating floods, caused by heavy monsoon rain, have once again struck the unhappy country of Pakistan. So far this year nearly 250 people have been killed and more than 600,000 homes have been destroyed. Last year, up to 2,000 people lost their lives.

The United Nations has launched an appeal for more than £230 million to help the estimated six million who have been affected this year. Once again, the Pakistan government has been criticised for what has been seen an ineffectual response.

More than two million people are said to be suffering from flood-related illnesses, while at least 7,000 have been bitten by snakes. Local people claim that if proper drainage systems had been in place, many lives could have been saved.

(See also my blogs of July 20, Aug 11, 17 and 23, 2010, and 27 Jan, 2011.)

Black Death WAS plague - official

2011-09-01T16:32:00.000+01:00

When I was at school, there was no doubt about it. We were taught that the Black Death – perhaps the most lethal disease ever to afflict humanity – was bubonic plague. Then some scientists came up with revisionist theories that it might have been an ebola-type virus, or anthrax, or some combination of infections.

Well now a group of Canadian researchers from McMaster University in Toronto believe they have proved the epidemic really was bubonic plague. They analysed bones from the 14^th century, and were able to extract the plague bacterium, though in a different form from the one we know today.

They hope also to throw light on why the disease carried off so many. From its first appearance in Central Asia in the 1330’s, it spread right across Europe and Asia, killing perhaps a third of the population. In some places it was even more deadly. Siena in Italy was said to have lost half of its people. Nearby San Gimignano, with its famous towers, even more.

The Black Death was a dreadful blow to the prestige of the Church which had failed to warn the faithful that God was about to inflict this dreadful punishment on them. It also produced a labour shortage, and as wages for the working class rose, the kings of England and France quickly imposed a wage freeze.

Baghdad bridge disaster anniversary

2011-08-31T10:45:00.000+01:00

In the week when it was revealed that back in 2002, British Prime Minister Tony Blair secretly promised President Bush that Britain would join in the bombing and invasion of Iraq in defiance of the United Nations, a sombre reminder of the chaos the deadly duo left behind.

On this day, six years ago, a million Shi’ite pilgrims had thronged to a holy site in Baghdad. The atmosphere was tense after a number of attacks by Sunni extremists. When rumours of a suicide bomber began to spread through the crowd, people fled to the Al-Aaimmah Bridge to try to escape.

Soon there was a dreadful crush, with pilgrims being suffocated and trampled to death. Railings gave way, and many people fell into the River Tigris below, while others jumped to escape the crush. One Sunni drowned from exhaustion after rescuing a number of people from the waters, but altogether up to 1,000 people died.

A Sunni group with links to al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for one of the earlier attacks that had helped cause the panic, but the government claimed the stampede had simply been a dreadful accident.

The letter that reveals Blair’s secret promise to Bush:-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/aug/29/tony-blair-iraq-un-resolution

Uganda landslides

2011-08-30T10:34:00.000+01:00

Heavy rain has brought disaster to another part of Africa. At least 24 people have been killed by landslides in the Bulambuli district of eastern Uganda. One village has been completely submerged in mud, and a chief, his wife and their eight children are reported to have died.

Red Cross workers and local people have been digging in the mud to try to find survivors, and hundreds of people have had to leave their homes. The sudden downpours follow months of below-average rain.

Last year, officials said they would be moving up to half a million people from the area after landslides killed at least 300 people, but in the end only a few thousand were relocated because of local opposition to the plan.

Many trees have been cut down because of rapid population growth, and this is said to have made floods and mudslides more common, while the government also blames climate change. (See also my blogs of November 12, 2009 and March 3, 2010.)

Floods in Africa

2011-08-29T11:33:00.000+01:00

Unusually heavy rains in Nigeria have resulted in at least 20 deaths around the city of Ibadan, 90 miles north of Lagos. A dam overflowed, and the fact that drains were clogged with rubbish made the inundation even worse.

Camps have been set up to accommodate the thousands of people who have been driven from their homes. Buildings have been flooded, food destroyed, and farmland swamped.

Last year, more than 100,000 people were made homeless by floods in the country, while across western and central Africa as a whole, more than 300 people were killed. The Niger river reached its highest level in 80 years, and there were severe food shortages in the aftermath of the flood, which affected half a dozen countries.

The African floods of 2007 were even more widespread, affecting 14 countries, disrupting the lives of 2.5 million people, and killing 250. (See also my blog of March 19, 2009)

London's worst ever riot

2011-08-10T16:06:00.000+01:00

The riots of the last few nights have been frightening enough, but fortunately they have, so far, been nothing like the worst ever to have disfigured London. It came in June 1780 as people got angry over a very minor dilution of the laws discriminating against Roman Catholics.

The ringleader was a young MP on the make, named Lord George Gordon, and what became known as the Gordon riots began with an invasion of Parliament, then soon developed into an attack on anyone or anything connected with Catholicism, like the Bavarian and Sardinian embassies, priests’ houses, homes owned by Catholics, a chapel.

Then the target list broadened to take in the homes of magistrates who had imprisoned rioters, and French Protestant refugees. Well, they were foreign weren’t they? How was a fellow supposed to tell the difference between a Protestant Frenchman and a Catholic? The rioters destroyed four prisons, and released the inmates, plus a distillery where they released the gin.

The authorities faced heavy criticism over what was seen as their initial rather relaxed attitude to the disorder, and after five days the army was turned out, while even the great radical, John Wilkes, took up arms against the mob. By the time order was restored, nearly 300 had been killed. For the full story, see London’s Disasters; from Boudicca to the Banking Crisis.

Yugoslav war crimes - job done?

2011-08-04T10:18:00.000+01:00

161 down, none to go. The calling to account of suspected war criminals after the tragedy of Yugoslavia has been perhaps the most successful operation of its kind in history.

Last month’s arrest of Goran Hadžíc, the leader of Croatia’s Serb minority during the conflict, meant that not one of the 161 people wanted for trial was still at large. Hadzic, a former warehouse worker, is alleged to have played a leading role in the destruction of the town of Vukovar in 1991, during which at least 264 people were tortured and killed.

He has already appeared before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia which was set up back in 1993, joining Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. Ten of the people indicted by the court died before they could be brought to justice, while Slobodan Milosevic died during his trial.

A crucial factor in the successful pursuit of the suspected war criminals has been the wish of the nations of the former Yugoslavia to join the EU, which has enabled international pressure to be brought to bear on their governments, even though many local people deny that any war crimes were committed.

World's deadliest supermarket fire

2011-08-01T10:37:00.000+01:00

On this day…..7 years ago, the world’s deadliest ever supermarket fire killed around 400 people at Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay. The food court at the Ycua Bolanos store was packed with families when there was an enormous gas explosion.

The blaze spread through the building at such speed it was said that firemen found cashiers sitting dead at their tills. Some shoppers were burned alive in the underground car park, while other victims were found hugging each other in the store.

Allegations surfaced that fire exits had been locked, and in December 2006, the owner of the store, his son and a security guard were each gaoled for five years, but the verdicts were followed by a riot, as families of the victims complained furiously at what they considered the undue leniency of the sentences.

At a re-trial just over a year later, the owner’s sentence was increased to 12 years, his son got 10 years, while the security guard’s five year sentence was confirmed. In addition, a shareholder who had been present when the fire started was gaoled for two and a half years, while the building’s architect spent two years under house arrest.

Lightning strike brings rail disaster

2011-07-25T11:01:00.000+01:00

On July 1, I blogged about the role played by lightning strikes in disasters, and on Saturday we saw another, when a Chinese bullet train was struck near the city of Wenzhou. It stalled, and another train ran into it from behind, killing at least 43 people and injuring another 200. A four year old child was found alive in one of the carriages 24 hours later.

China’s bullet trains came into service in 2007, with some travelling at more than 180 miles an hour. In Saturday’s crash, four coaches from the second train fell off a viaduct up to 100 feet high.

Plenty of people are worried about how a lightning strike could cause a disaster on this scale. Three senior rail officials have been sacked, and an official newspaper has said the crash represented a ‘bloody lesson’ and should be a spur to ‘safer railway standards.’

Public anger seems to go further, though, with 97 per cent declaring themselves unhappy about the government’s response to the accident in an online poll of 44,000, and some blaming official corruption.

Amy Winehouse

2011-07-24T08:27:00.000+01:00

Farewell to my neighbour, Amy Winehouse. Thanks for the great music, Amy. RIP.

Famines in Africa

2011-07-21T10:06:00.000+01:00

The United Nations has officially declared a famine in Somalia, the first since 1992. Half the population – 3.7 million – are said to be at risk, with another 7 million in Kenya and Ethiopia also in need of help.

As is so often the case in African famines, politics is playing a part. The Islamist militia, al-Shabab, which is affiliated to al-Qaeda, controls the area where the famine is raging, and two years ago it banned foreign aid agencies. Even now it is prepared to allow only limited access.

The stricken area had previously included the most fertile part of the country, and the UN says nearly £1 billion in aid is needed. The USA has said it will send help so long as al-Shahab does not interfere with it, or use it to raise money.

The great Ethiopian famines of the 1970’s and 80’s were also aggravated by politics. In the first, the Emperor Haile Selassie, responded lethargically (and was promptly deposed), while the second was exacerbated by President Mengistu’s scorched earth campaign against rebels, and his determination that the famine would not spoil a birthday celebration for his regime.

Target Mumbai

2011-07-15T15:44:00.000+01:00

Mumbai was always regarded as a diverse, tolerant city. Maybe that is why it has been targeted so often by terrorists. In Wednesday’s attack, three bombs went off, thought to have been activated by timers, and 18 people were killed.

In 2008, a group of ten Muslim gunmen murdered 165 people in attacks on hotels, a station, and other places frequented by foreigners. Back in March 1993, more than a dozen bombs made from plastic explosives and detonated by timers killed at least 257 people, while the terrorists also threw grenades at Mumbai airport.

Ten years later, bombings killed another 50 people, while in July 2006, seven bombs were set off on rush-hour trains during a period of 11 minutes, claiming 209 lives. Police blamed an outlawed Indian Muslim organisation, Lashkar-e-Toiba (‘Soldiers of the Pure’), but said the outrage had been planned by Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI.

A trial of 13 people accused of involvement is still wending its way through the Indian justice system, with judgment now expected before the end of the year.

Russian disasters

2011-07-11T18:57:00.000+01:00

Up to 110 people, including 50 children, have been drowned after an overloaded tourist boat sank on the Volga River in Russia. The vessel’s official capacity was only 120, but it was said to have been carrying 208 people.

The 55 year old Bulgaria went down in minutes after being caught in a storm, while it was en route from Bolgary to Kazan, and the Russian authorities have launched a criminal investigation into the disaster amid reports that one of the vessel’s engines was not working.

President Medvedev has ordered safety checks on ‘all means’ of passenger transport, saying the Bulgaria was in a poor state, and that Russia had too many ‘old rust tubs’.

Back in the 1980’s after a series of dreadful accidents in the former Soviet Union, including Chernobyl and a gas explosion by the Trans-Siberian Railway, President Gorbachev complained that too many resulted from ‘negligence, irresponsibility and a lack of proper organisation’. It looks as though his successor believes that problem is far from being solved.

Bloody Assizes + 326

2011-07-06T10:10:00.000+01:00

This day…..326 years ago saw the last battle (touch wood!) fought on English soil. The rebel army of Charles II’s illegitimate Protestant son, the Duke of Monmouth, was decisively defeated by the forces of his uncle, the Catholic King James II, at Sedgemoor in Somerset.

The battle was followed by a ferocious campaign of repression in the West Country. The royalist commander set up a line of gibbets along the road to Bridgwater, and hanged a captured rebel from each one. Monmouth was found disguised as a shepherd and beheaded.

Next Colonel Percy Kirke, and his fearsome soldiers ironically nicknamed ‘Kirke’s Lambs’, summarily executed another 100 during the course of a week, before he was recalled for being too lenient. So in early September, Judge Jeffreys set out on his ‘Bloody Assizes’.

Jeffreys’s speciality was abusing and terrifying defendants and any witnesses who spoke up for them – ‘lying, snivelling, canting Presbyterians’ and that kind of thing. Altogether, he hanged more than 300, and had more than 800 transported. Three years later, James II was fleeing the country, as he was deposed by William of Orange.

Lightning strikes

2011-07-01T07:27:00.000+01:00

Eighteen children and a teacher have been killed after lightning struck a school in the Masindi area of Uganda. It is the second time the Runyanya Primary School has been hit. In 2001, a lightning strike injured three people.

Across Uganda, another 12 people have been killed by lightning during the last week. Meterologists say the reason for the strikes is a surge of moist air coming through the Congo Basin, but the government has also admitted that many buildings are not fitted with lightning conductors.

Perhaps the deadliest ever incident involving a lightning strike came in 1769 at Brescia in Italy, when the Church of St Nazaire was struck, setting fire to 100 tons of gunpowder stored in its vaults. The resulting explosion is said to have destroyed a sixth of the city, and killed 3,000 people.

More recently, in November 1994, fuel tanks were struck at Dronka in central Egypt. 469 people died in the explosion that followed.

Woman gaoled for Rwanda genocide

2011-06-27T11:37:00.000+01:00

The first woman convicted in connection with the 1994 Rwanda genocide has been sent to gaol for life. Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, aged 65, was the minister for family and women’s development (!). Her son, Arsène Shalom Ntahobali, and four other people were also convicted.

When Hutus began murdering Tutsis in other parts of the country, the Butare region, by the Burundi border, was for a short time a haven of peace. Then Nyiramasuhuko, a former social worker, ordered the local governor to get killing. When he refused, he was sacked and then killed.

The convicted woman brought in militias from the capital, Kigali, and, with the help of her son, organised mass murder and the kidnap and rape of women and girls. She and her son often manned the roadblocks at which Tutsis were detained.

When the Rwandan Patriotic Front deposed the genocidal government in July 1994, Nyiramasuhuko fled, but was arrested in Kenya in 1997. Altogether, 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered in just 100 days. (See also my blogs of April 9, 2009, Dec 11, 2010, May 9 and 29, 2011 etc)

World's deadliest terror attack on a single aircraft

2011-06-23T18:11:00.000+01:00

On this day…..26 years ago, the deadliest act of terrorism involving a single aircraft happened thousands of feet above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ireland. An Air India jumbo jet en route from Montreal to Heathrow was blown up, killing all 329 people on board.

The previous year, the Sikhs’ holiest shrine, the Golden Temple at Amritsar, had been stormed by Indian troops, and the police investigation in Canada centred on Sikh extremists. One, alleged to be the mastermind, was killed in a gun battle with Indian police in 1992.

It was not until 2000 that the first suspects were charged. Inderjit Singh Reyat was sentenced to five years in prison, but two others were acquitted. There were claims that some witnesses were intimidated, and that another was murdered before he could give evidence.

An official investigation published in 2010 was highly critical of the government, the police and the intelligence services, while in January of this year, Reyat was gaoled for nine years for perjuring himself to protect the two men who were acquitted. For more, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Chinese floods

2011-06-20T19:33:00.000+01:00

Floods in China’s Zhejiang and Hubei provinces, following torrential rain, have caused the deaths of at least 170 people. The flooding is said to be the worst in the area since 1955, and more than 5 million people have been caught up in the disaster.

The rising waters have also triggered landslides, and the government has mobilised troops to evacuate hundreds of thousands of people.

China has experienced many deadly floods in its history. The Yellow River, known as ‘China’s sorrow’ is said to have flooded 1,500 times. In September, 1887 after a period of very heavy rain, it burst the dykes that local people had built along its banks, and inundated an area of up to 50,000 square miles.

The flood was followed by famine and disease, and the number of people who perished may have been as high as 2.5 million, making this probably the deadliest flood the world has ever seen.

AIDS - 30 years on

2011-06-15T12:52:00.000+01:00

It was 30 years ago this month that the world was first alerted to the threat of AIDS as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention received reports that five homosexual men from Los Angeles had a rare form of fungus-borne pneumonia known as PCP.

Three decades on, there are some grounds for cautious optimism. The peak year for deaths from AIDS so far was 2005, when 2.1 million people died. The latest figure is down to around 1.8 million.

The rate of new infections in 30 of the world’s poorest countries has fallen by a quarter or more from its peak, while more than 6 million people are now getting anti-retroviral drugs in less prosperous countries against just 2 million five years ago. A new study has shown that these drugs appear to be very effective in preventing the disease spreading.

It is not all good news, though. For every person put on effective medication, there are two newly infected, and as the world’s economy slows down, so has the amount of money being devoted to fighting the disease.

* This is the cover of my new book – Britain’s Worst Military Disasters from the Roman Conquest to the Fall of Singapore. Out soon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Britains-Worst-Military-Disasters-Singapore/dp/0752461974

The massacred village

2011-06-10T08:20:00.000+01:00

On this day…….67 years ago, the SS murdered 642 men, women and children at the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane. The victims ranged in age from one week to 90 years. Most were inhabitants, but a few just happened to be seized as they were cycling through the village.

Soldiers from the 4^th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment were on their way to confront the allies who had landed in Normandy four days earlier, when they were approached by members of the Milice, the French secret police who worked with the Gestapo, to say the Resistance were holding an SS officer hostage in the village of Oradour-sur-Vayres, about 15 miles from Oradour-sur-Glane.

It seems the SS got the wrong village. At Oradour-sur-Glane, they herded the men into barns, shot them, then burned down the barns. Then they locked the women and children in the church, set it on fire, and shot down any who managed to get out. Just one woman survived. Finally the village was destroyed.

Today its ruins are still preserved as a monument.

*Something more cheerful. My friend Johnny Bull’s wonderful picture of the Queen Mary, The Return of the Native, has been selling like hot cakes at the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition in London. Get along to see it while stocks last!

http://johnnybulletins.blogspot.com/2011/01/work-in-progress-return-of-native.html

US - worst tornado season in 75 years

2011-06-05T17:31:00.000+01:00

More than 520 people have been killed in tornadoes in the United States so far this year, making it the deadliest since 1936.

Between April 25 and 28, what has now been dubbed the 2011 Super Outbreak caused the deaths of 317 people in Alabama and seven other states. Then on May 22, Joplin, Missouri was devastated with 138 people being killed.

According to some estimates, up to 75% of the city of 50,000 was damaged, with around 2,000 buildings destroyed. One relief worker described the devastation as ‘unimaginable’, and when President Obama visited Joplin, he said it was the worst destruction he had ever seen, calling the scene ‘heartbreaking’, but he promised government help to rebuild the city.

Scientists put the strength of the tornado at the top of the scale used to measure them. (See also my blogs of April 18 and May 24.)

War crimes arrests - Serbia and Rwanda

2011-05-29T14:32:00.000+01:00

Supporters of suspected war criminal, Ratko Mladic, are due to march in Belgrade today to try to stop him being extradited to the Hague to face trial. The former Bosnian Serb army chief is accused of being responsible for the murder of about 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995, as well as other crimes.

Serbia’s failure to arrest Gen Mladic for 16 years means that he is now aged 69, and his lawyers have been trying to resist having him handed over to the court on grounds of ill health. An appeal will be heard tomorrow. Meanwhile, the Serbian war crimes prosecutor says that anyone who helped to shield Gen Mladic from justice could find themselves in serious trouble.

The general’s political boss, Radavan Karadzic, is already awaiting trial at the Hague after being arrested in 2008. The former Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic, died during his trial in 2006.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the most notorious leaders of the Rwandan Hutu militia during the 1994 genocide has been arrested. Bernard Munyagishari was wanted on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

North Korea - new famine?

2011-05-26T07:12:00.000+01:00

A US delegation has gone to North Korea to examine how serious food shortages there are, with the United Nations due to take a decision shortly on whether emergency aid should be released. According to some estimates, 3.5 million North Koreans are suffering from severe malnutrition.

For years, the regime has relied on handouts from the USA and South Korea to feed its people, but it also regularly bites the donors’ hands. Last year it shelled a South Korean island, and is believed to have sunk a South Korean naval vessel, and both the government there and the US have been reining back aid.

Food production, which is never very efficient, is thought to have been hit this year by an exceptionally cold winter, widespread flooding and an outbreak of foot and mouth disease. Some observers, though, maintain the regime is exaggerating the problems in order to build up food stockpiles for next year’s celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim-Il Sung, the ‘Great Leader’ who founded the Communist republic.

During the 1990’s, the country suffered one of the worst famines of modern times, with up to 2.4 million people dying.

The world's strongest earthquake

2011-05-22T13:18:00.000+01:00

This day……..51 years ago saw the most powerful earthquake in recorded history, with a reading of 9.5. Its epicentre was close to the city of Canete in Chile about 560 miles south of Santiago.

It caused tsunamis that battered the Chilean coast with waves up to 80 feet high. Hawaii was also hit, and 35 foot high waves were recorded as far away as Japan and the Philippines. Australia and New Zealand also experienced tsunamis.

Chile had already suffered a smaller earthquake the previous day, and the government was trying to organise a relief effort when the big one struck. Some coastal villages disappeared completely, while about 40 per cent of the houses in the city of Valdivia were destroyed, leaving about 20,000 people homeless.

Estimates of the total number of people killed range as high as 6,000, including more than 60 in Hilo, the main town on the ‘Big Island’ of Hawaii. The death toll in Japan was more than 140.

World War Two - last war crimes trial?

2011-05-14T07:06:00.000+01:00

In what may turn out to be the last World War Two war crimes trial, 91 year old John Demjanjuk has been found guilty of helping to murder more than 28,000 Jews at the Nazi death camp of Sobibor in what is now Poland. He was sentenced to five years in prison, but will be released pending appeal.

Demjanjuk told the court in Munich that he had not served as a guard at the camp, and that he was a prisoner of war. The case turned on an SS identity card, which the defence claimed was a fake. In all, an estimated 250,000 people were killed at Sobibor.

In the 1980’s, an Israeli court indentified Demjanjuk as ‘Ivan the Terrible’, a notorious guard at the Treblinka death camp, and sentenced him to death, but the country’s supreme court overturned the verdict after new evidence emerged.

Some of the relatives of those who died at Sobibor said the verdict on Demjanjuk was not the most important thing. They were satisfied that a court in the city where the Nazi party was born had had to listen to the details of the industrialised murder machine that Hitler’s regime created. (See also my blog of Nov 30, 2009.)

Congo genocide - trials in Germany

2011-05-09T16:13:00.000+01:00

Two Rwandan Hutu leaders have gone on trial in Germany over alleged atrocities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Ignace Murwanashyaka, head of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), and his deputy Straton Musoni face 26 counts of crimes against humanity and 39 of war crimes.

Because both of them live in Stuttgart, they are subject to a new German law which allows foreigners to be prosecuted for crimes committed outside the country. The two men are accused of ordering militias to commit mass murder and rape during 2008 and 2009.

The prosecutors say the FDLR shot people who would not co-operate with them, used rape as a weapon of war, and burned down whole villages. A lawyer representing one of the accused claimed the trial was unfair.

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda involved Hutu extremists killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus. When the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front came to power, many Hutus fled across into Congo, sparking years of unrest. Between 1998 and 2003, 5 million people died in what became known as ‘Africa’s world war.’

(See also my blogs of Jan 23, March 23, Sept 23, 2009, Sept 3 and 9, 2010.)

US tornadoes - biggest outbreak ever

2011-05-04T14:09:00.000+01:00

The USA has just suffered its most active tornado outbreak since records began. Between April 25 and April 28, no fewer than 362 struck, including 312 during one 24 hour period. The previous record was 148 over two days in April 1974.

The twisters killed at least 350 people in Alabama and 6 other states, making this the deadliest episode since the Tupelo-Gainesville outbreak of 1936 when about 435 people were killed by 17 tornadoes in the states of Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina.

This time the worst hit was Alabama, where 250 people were killed. The winds also caused death and destruction in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia. Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was the town that suffered most, where the clear-up is expected to cost at least £40m.

The deadliest tornado in US history remains the Great Tri-State Tornado of 1925, which caused the deaths of more than 700 people. (See my blog of April 18)

Sri Lanka war crimes

2011-04-27T11:48:00.002+01:00

A United Nations investigation has concluded that Sri Lankan government forces killed tens of thousands of civilians in the final stages of the country’s civil war in 2009. Its report also says that the Tamil Tiger rebels used civilians as human shields, and that both sides were guilty of atrocities.

The Sri Lankan government had refused to allow the investigating team into the country, and tried to get the report suppressed. It has now rejected its findings.

The report says that government forces deliberately shelled hospitals, UN centres and Red Cross ships in the last rebel-held enclave in the north of the country. It urges Sri Lanka to begin a fair investigation into acts that could amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said that he cannot investigate the allegations himself unless the Sri Lankan government agrees, or member states make the request, but the pressure group Human Rights Watch disputes this.

Space disasters

2011-04-24T07:50:00.003+01:00

On this day……44 years ago, Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died in the world’s first fatal space accident. A new kind of spacecraft was being used and it ran into a number of problems, culminating in the parachute failing to open properly on re-entry so that the capsule crashed into the ground.

The world’s deadliest space accidents both involved the American Space Shuttle. Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds after lift-off at Cape Canaveral on January 28, 1986. A faulty seal allowed hot gasses to escape causing the craft to break up in mid air, killing all seven people on board. Fragments are still occasionally washed ashore in Florida.

Seventeen years later, on February 1, 2003, Columbia was lost on re-entry at the end of a two-week mission. A piece of insulation foam had broken away during launch and damaged the shuttle’s left wing. It broke up over Texas, and all seven crew members were killed, including the first Israeli in space.

American tornadoes

2011-04-18T20:28:00.004+01:00

Over the last few days, more than 60 tornadoes have ripped through North Carolina in the USA, killing 21 people. Another 24 people died in the states of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Virginia. There were also flash floods and hailstones the size of grapefruit.

It was the highest number of tornadoes recorded in the US since 1984 when 42 people were killed. The Governor of North Carolina said that homes had been demolished as though they were made of paper.

The worst twister in US history was the Great Tri-State Tornado of March 18, 1925 which devastated Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, killing more than 700 people. The highest number of deaths were in Illinois – 613 – the biggest number in a single state in US history.

The town worst hit was Murphysboro, where 234 people were killed – the worst toll for a single town in US history. For more details see A Disastrous History of the World.

Meat is suicide?

2011-04-14T10:33:00.003+01:00

We are used to the idea that many diseases pass to us from other creatures – such as swine flu and bird flu in recent years, while, of course, the deadliest epidemic in history, bubonic plague, came from the flea of the black rat.

Now there is a new one to worry about – Congo fever, which has afflicted Africa and the Middle East for a long time, but has now started killing people in Gujarat in north-western India. It is caused by a virus transmitted by ticks that feed on a variety of wild and domestic animals and birds, and the death rate of those infected is about one in three.

It is reckoned that about three quarters of all new diseases pass to humans from animals, and the growing prosperity of countries such as India could make things worse. As people get richer they tend to eat more meat, and that means that those who once had just a few chickens in their backyards are now keeping animals, sometimes in quite large numbers.

The International Livestock Research Institute reckons that the world has 450 million smallholders, and as towns grow bigger, more animals and meat are transported, helping infections to spread further and faster.

Bangladesh - war crimes trials stall

2011-04-06T11:15:00.002+01:00

The war that brought independence for Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) ended in 1971. Estimates of the number of lives lost range up to 3 million – many murdered in cold blood by the West Pakistan army - and perhaps 10 million people fled their homes.

Over the last few months, there have been attempts to call to account some of those responsible for atrocities during the conflict. The authorities are not going after the West Pakistan army, but alleged local collaborators who helped them.

Dozens of suspects are banned from leaving the country, and the war crimes tribunal has issued arrest warrants against five party leaders, including two former ministers, though they are not charged with war crimes, and unfortunately, the whole process has become mired in inter-party political rivalries.

The general belief is that if the opposition wins the next general election, due in 2013, it will scrap the war crimes trials, and they are the favourites. No democratic government in Bangladesh’s short history has ever won a second term.

Japanese stoicism

2011-04-01T09:42:00.002+01:00

There have been a number of comments about the stoicism and quiet determination shown by the Japanese people in the wake of last month’s devastating earthquake and tsunami. Just four days after the quake, for example, in spite of power cuts, transport disruption, fears of aftershocks and nuclear radiation, people patiently queued to make sure they handed in their tax returns on time.

This is not a new phenomenon. After the earthquake of 1923 that killed perhaps 150,000 people in Tokyo and Yokohama, and left nearly two million homeless, the Times of London reported: ‘There is no panic and marvelous patience is shown by all classes.’

All day and night, wrote the correspondent, there was an endless procession of people ‘carrying portable goods and their salved belongings, or using trunks and carts....a whole family pushing them along, often with the grandparents riding on the top of the pile…. the weak were carried on the backs of the strong.....they exhibited patience beyond praise. Many jested; some even began to rebuild their homes before the ashes of the old homes were cold.’ Within days, businesses and shops were starting up again in the stricken areas.

For the full story, see A Disastrous History of the World.

Japan - survival story

2011-03-22T10:01:00.002Z

Over the weekend, an 80 year old woman and her 16 year old grandson were saved from the rubble of a house in Ishinomaki city that had been demolished in the Japanese earthquake 9 days before.

They were in their kitchen when the quake struck, and survived by eating yoghurt and other food from the fridge. The grandson managed to reach the roof of the house, where he was able to flag down a rescue helicopter. They are now being treated in hospital.

The official death toll from the earthquake and tsunami has risen to more than 9,000, and more than 12,500 are still missing. For other stories of remarkable escapes, see my blogs of July 4, 2009 and Aug 24, 2010.

*Just discovered a new review of A Disastrous History of the World in the Sandwell &Great Barr Chronicle of January 27.

Fukushima - tell it like it is

2011-03-19T13:08:00.004Z

Suspicions that the Japanese authorities were not being totally open about the effects of last week’s earthquake on the Fukushima nuclear power station (see my blog of March 14) appear to have been well grounded.

It has now been revealed that we are experiencing the world’s worst nuclear accident apart from Chernobyl, and officials admit that what they had originally said was only a local problem, really has ‘wider consequences’. Unsafe radiation levels have already been found in milk and spinach, though they claim this still represents no risk to human health.

Japan’s government concedes that it ‘could have moved a little quicker’ in providing accurate information. Well, let us hope we are now being told the whole truth. All six reactors have problems of some kind, and the alert level has been raised one notch. Today workers at the plant are hoping to restore some of the automatic cooling systems.

Altogether, just over 7,300 people are known to have died in the earthquake, with 11,000 more still missing.

*The earthquake has prompted a newspaper columnist to think about my book – A Disastrous History of the World.

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/features/columnists/8909805.Disasters_always_waiting_to_happen/

If you want to help people in Japan, here’s a good way:-

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/profile.php?id=100000056583886

Japan earthquake - nuclear fears

2011-03-14T09:45:00.003Z

As reports come in of thousands of bodies being washed up on the north-eastern shore of Honshu – Japan’s main island – following the earthquake and tsunami, concern is now growing about the danger of radiation from the Fukushima nuclear power station.

Two reactors have been damaged by explosions, and a third has its cooling system out of action. The government is saying there is no cause for alarm, but more than 20 people are being treated for the effects of radiation, and tens of thousands have been evacuated, while the US military has pulled its people back from the area.

The decision to build nuclear power stations in an area so prone to earthquakes was heavily criticised. Atomic energy and secrecy tend to go hand in hand, so everyone is hoping the Japanese authorities are being more open than the Soviet apparatchiks at Chernobyl in 1986, where a ‘safety experiment’ produced the world’s worst nuclear accident.

At first they tried to hush the whole thing up, and it was only when a Swedish monitoring station detected unusual levels of radiation that the Russians began to admit the truth. Twenty-five years after the explosion, people are still dying from its effects, and some estimates put the number of additional cancers that it will cause as high as 200,000.

* Yesterday I was interviewed about the earthquake on BBC Radio Berkshire. This is the link:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_tLViNtSlU

Japanese earthquakes

2011-03-13T07:31:00.003Z

We have seen some astonishing television pictures of a raging tsunami, but we still have no real idea of how many people may have been killed in Friday’s earthquake in Japan. The town of Rikuzentakada is almost completely underwater, while at the port of Minamisanriku, around 10,000 people are missing, though the authorities did manage to evacuate about 7,500.

Japan is no stranger to earthquakes. Back in 1703, Tokyo – then known as Edo – was devastated in a quake that killed an estimated 150,000 people, and there was a similar death toll in the one that struck the city just before noon on September 1, 1923.

Tokyo has always been a city of close-packed houses in narrow alleys, and in 1923 they were mainly built of wood and paper. Many families were cooking on open stoves, and when these fell over, they started fires all over the city, which then combined into furious conflagrations, which claimed more victims than the earthquake itself.

When the rebuilding began, there were suggestions that Japan’s capital should be moved to a new safer site, but people decided they wanted to go on living where they always had.

*I was interviewed about the earthquake on the BBC’s Three Counties Radio, and you can hear the interview via this link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWbgV42j4Uc

'War on drugs' spreads

2011-03-08T19:47:00.002Z

Another 18 people have been added to the death toll in Mexico’s ‘war on drugs’ as rival gangs fought gun battles in the north-eastern town of Abasolo. That brings the total number killed over the last five years to a staggering 34,000.

Now the ‘war’ is spreading, as the Mexican mafias move into neighbouring countries, such as Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. The last two now have the highest murder rates in the world.

The mobs run training camps, and recruit among ex-soldiers laid off as defence spending has been cut. Central America is reckoned to have 70,000 young people who are members of gangs.

The countries involved are among the poorest in the world, and receive little outside help. (See also my blogs of June 10,12 and Sept 10, 2010.)

New Zealand's worst disasters

2011-03-01T15:54:00.001Z

The death toll in last week’s earthquake at Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island stands officially at 154, but the authorities are warning it could rise as high as 240. Today the country held a two-minute silence to commemorate the victims.

The earthquake – with a force of 6.3 - was not as strong as many others that have done less damage, such as last September’s in the same region which was measured at 7.1. On that occasion, the quake happened in the middle of the night when there were fewer people around, and it also struck further from the surface.

Though survivors were being pulled from the rubble left by the Haiti earthquake eleven days after the disaster (see my blog of Jan 24, 2010), all hope seems to have been lost of finding anyone else alive in Christchurch.

New Zealand’s deadliest ever natural disaster remains the Hawke’s Bay earthquake of 1931 which happened on the country’s North Island. Measured at 7.9, it killed 256 people. The country is prone to earthquakes because it lies along the boundary between the Australian and Pacific plates.

My new book - Britain's Worst Military Disasters

2011-02-25T18:30:00.002Z

So the secret is out. I'm writing a new book - Britain's Worst Military Disasters. To be published in 217 days, says Waterstone's!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Britains-Worst-Military-Disasters-Singapore/dp/0752461974

https://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/john+withington/britain27s+worst+military+disasters/8396464/

http://www.whsmith.co.uk/CatalogAndSearch/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductID=9780752461977

Japanese war crimes - the search begins after 66 years

2011-02-21T13:15:00.002Z

An excavation has begun in Tokyo to try to find human remains linked to a programme of biological warfare experiments inflicted on prisoners of war during World War Two. At a base in occupied northern China, the Japanese ran an operation known as Unit 731, in which thousands of prisoners were supposed to have been injected with agents causing diseases like typhus and cholera.

The unit is also alleged to have dissected victims alive and to have frozen prisoners to death. It is believed that some of the remains of those killed were taken back to Tokyo for analysis. In 2006, a former nurse, now aged 88, said that she and colleagues at an army hospital at the site now being investigated were ordered to bury numerous corpses, bones and body parts before the Americans came, following Japan’s surrender in August 1945.

According to a history professor at Kanagawa University, the site was the research headquarters of Unit 731. The slowness in looking into the former nurse’s claims will be seen as another example of Japan’s lack of enthusiasm for investigating the crimes the regime perpetrated during World War Two.

Fragments of bone, many showing saw marks, were found at a site nearby in 1989, but the government said they were not linked to Unit 731. In 2002, a Japanese court rejected claims for compensation from 180 Chinese people who claimed they had been victims of Japan’s biological warfare unit.

Peacetime ammunition explosions

2011-02-17T13:29:00.002Z

At least 32 people have been killed in a series of explosions at munitions depots at an army base in Tanzania’s commercial capital, Dar es Salaam. The blasts at the Gongola Mboto base went on for several hours.

Most of those killed were people living near the base, as debris flew through the air. The explosions caused panic because residents had no clear information on what was happening. At least 4,000 are said to be sheltering at the National Stadium.

Two years ago, explosions at the Mbagala army base, near Dar es Salaam, killed more than 20 people.

An even more devastating explosion at an army base was the one that ripped through the Ikeja cantonment, near Lagos in Nigeria, on 27 January, 2002. Houses were flattened, and shells, grenades and bullets set off. Perhaps 2,000 people died. For more details, see A Disastrous History of the World.

*This is a television report that I did in 1975 that has just turned up on the net!

http://www.macearchive.org/Media.html?Title=23148#

Iraq chaos continues Part 94

2011-02-13T12:45:00.003Z

The carnage unleashed by Messrs Blair and Bush when they plotted their invasion of Iraq nearly 8 years ago still continues. The death toll from a suicide bomb yesterday aimed at Shi’ite pilgrims near the city of Samarra has risen to 48. Another 80 people have been injured.

The bomber detonated his explosives at a bus depot as Shi’ites were gathering to commemorate the death of one of their most revered imams. Some are blaming al-Qaeda.

Hardly a day goes by in Iraq without a bombing or some other terrorist attack. Last month, dozens of Shi’ite pilgrims were killed in attacks near the holy city of Kerbala, while last Wednesday, at least seven died in the northern city of Kirkuk.

* I was going to keep this under my hat a little longer, but the all-seeing internet has revealed that I’m writing a new book - Britain’s Worst Military Disasters: from the Roman Conquest to the fall of Singapore. Here are a couple of links:-

https://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/john+withington/britain27s+worst+military+disasters/8396464/

http://www.whsmith.co.uk/CatalogAndSearch/ProductDetails.aspx?ProductID=9780752461977

Chechen warlord claims Moscow bomb

2011-02-08T07:58:00.002Z

A Chechen warlord, Doku Umarov, has said that he ordered the suicide bombing of Moscow’s Domodedovo airport last month which killed 36 people. He said the attacks would continue until Russia left the Caucasus.

Russian investigators say the bomber was a 20 year old man from the North Caucasus. Umarov, who was a minister in the Chechen separatist government of the 1990’s, also claimed responsibility for an explosion on the Moscow Metro in March of last year in which 39 people died.

The two wars that the Chechens fought with Moscow to try to secure their independence resulted in their capital Grozny being turned into what the United Nations described as ‘the most destroyed city on the planet’. The first caused the deaths of up to 100,000 people – mainly Chechen civilians.

The Chechens have since mounted a number of terrorist attacks. One resulted in the deaths of 120 people in a Moscow theatre in 2002, while the seizing of a school in North Ossetia in 2004 cost the lives of 330, including 150 children. (See also my blog of April 16, 2009.)

*This is the latest review of my book A Disastrous History of the World.

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/leisure/books/8807420.A_Disastrous_History_of_the_World_by_John_Withington__Piatkus_paperback____9_99_/

Sri Lanka - another forgotten flood

2011-02-06T10:01:00.003Z

One month ago today (Jan 6, 2011), I blogged about the Philippines floods, which had been forgotten as the world watched what was happening in Australia. The world also seems to have overlooked the current monsoon floods in Sri Lanka.

At least 14 people have been killed, and more than a million have had their homes flooded. A quarter of a million are now living in shelters provided by the government. Roads and fields are under water across the east, centre and north of the island.

Those areas were also hit by floods caused by heavy rain last month, when 43 people were killed. The United Nations appealed for 51 million dollars in emergency aid to help the victims.

Perhaps the deadliest monsoon flood of all time was the one that struck India in September 1978, and was made even more disastrous by a cyclone the following month. An estimated 15,000 people were killed.

Cambodia - wheels of justice

2011-02-01T09:33:00.005Z

More than 30 years after the Cambodian genocide of the late 1970’s, three people accused of plotting it have appeared at the UN-backed war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh.

Nuon Chea, now aged 84, was second-in-command to the notorious Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, and known as Brother Number Two. The other two are the former head of state, Khieu Samphan, and the ex-social affairs minister, Ieng Thirith. Also awaiting trial is Ieng Thirith's husband Ieng Sary, who was the Khmer Rouge foreign minister.

The defendants have been in detention since 2007. A date for the trial has not yet been set, but it is due to begin by the middle of this year. The court which was set up in 2006 has so far tried only one person, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Comrade Duch, who ran the notorious Tuol Sleng ‘special interrogation centre’ in the Cambodian capital. Of 15,000 people held there, only seven are thought to have survived. Duch was found guilty of crimes against humanity.

The latest trial is expected to last for three years, and there are worries about how it will be funded. (See also my blogs of 7 Jan, 4 March, 29 June, and 22 Nov, 2009, and 16 Sept, 2010.)

Pakistan floods + six months

2011-01-27T15:37:00.003Z

Six months after Pakistan's worst monsoon floods in 80 years, at least 170,000 people are still living in relief camps, and huge areas of land are covered by contaminated water, while the charity Oxfam says that more and more people are suffering from malnutrition.

The Pakistan government is due to halt most emergency relief this month, but only just over half of the £1.26bn that the UN wanted to raise to help rebuild the country has been secured.

Oxfam says it is helping nearly 2 million people, and that, with temperatures plummeting below zero, more than 200,000 people are ill with chest complaints. It has also warned that so many crops were ruined, and so many farmers unable to plant that food could run short.

Altogether about 1,750 people were drowned in the floods, while up to 1.2 million homes were destroyed. (See also my blogs of 23 Aug, 4 and & Sept, 2010.)

Brazil's worst ever natural disaster?

2011-01-24T15:25:00.003Z

More than 800 people are known to have died in the floods and landslides that have been afflicting the south-east of Brazil, and 400 more are missing after torrential rain washed whole hillsides away. It is being described as the country’s worst ever natural disaster.

The worst hit town is Nova Friburgo, where more than 320 have been killed. According to one analysis of the figures, about a third of the victims are children and adolescents. Many communities can now be reached only by helicopter.

As with so many disasters, there are now fears that disease may follow in the wake of the initial catastrophe. A number of people are known to have contracted leptospirosis, an illness spread by water contaminated with rats’ urine.

The deadliest mudslide ever was probably the one that hit Venezuela’s coastal strip in December 1999, after 36 inches of rain fell in just a few days. An estimated 30,000 people died. (See also my blogs of April 17, Oct 10, Nov 12 and 19, 2009 and Feb 21 and Aug 12, 2010).

Haiti one year on

2011-01-12T19:47:00.001Z

It’s a year since the disastrous Haiti earthquake killed a quarter of a million people, and twelve months on, the pace of reconstruction has been disappointing, with at least 800,000 people still living in temporary shelters. This is a particular nightmare for the women and girls who live in the camps, as rape and sexual assault are daily occurrences.

With so many people finding it hard to get access to clean water, 3,500 have died of cholera over recent months, and political deadlock has made the situation worse. There were complaints of fraud and intimidation in November’s indecisive elections, and the second round has still not been held.

Last March, international donors promised more than £1.25 billion, but by the end of last month, nearly 40 per cent of that had still not been spent. Former US President, Bill Clinton, now a UN envoy to the country, admitted his frustration, but said he hoped the pace would now pick up.

*Now you can follow me on Facebook:- http://www.facebook.com/update_security_info.php?wizard=1#!/pages/Disaster-historian/166380310063983

Famous fire

2011-01-10T09:48:00.003Z

On this day…..173 years ago, one of London’s most famous buildings, the Royal Exchange, was burned down. The building had no nightwatchman , so it was not until flames were bursting out of the windows that they were spotted from the Bank of England across the street.

January 10, 1838 was a very cold night, and when the firemen arrived they found that the plugs in the water mains from which they drew off supplies had frozen solid. This delayed their efforts considerably, and soon the whole of the front of the building was ablaze.

Porters hurled furniture and documents into the street to the cheers of the big crowd that had now gathered. They cheered even louder when a bag of gold sovereigns was thrown out. Inside firemen did their best but eventually they were driven back by the heat and smoke, and the building was virtually destroyed.

It was the second time the Royal Exchange had been burned down – the first being during the Great Fire of 1666. Once again, it was soon rebuilt. For the full story, see London’s Disasters: from Boudicca to the Banking Crisis.

Philippine floods

2011-01-06T12:50:00.002Z

While the eyes of the world have been drawn to the floods in eastern Australia, those caused by heavy rain in the Philippines seem to have passed almost unnoticed, even though at least 18 people have lost their lives.

Nearly 90,000 families have been hit in 19 provinces, and there has been severe damage to crops. The rains have also caused mudslides in four regions, and five villages in Compostela Valley have been cut off.

With further heavy rain expected, the situation could get worse. Some observers see this extreme weather as another effect of global warming.

*Full house for my talk on London’s Disasters at Shoe Lane Library in the City of London on Tuesday! Thanks to all who came.

Indian cold + reminder

2011-01-03T15:08:00.003Z

Every year, in India, hundreds of people die in summer from the extreme heat. Then in the winter, the poor and the homeless perish from the extreme cold. So far this winter, the toll is said to be at least two dozen.

Particularly badly hit have been Haryana, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, while in Delhi temperatures have gone down to almost -8C, and at Leh in Kashmir, the thermometer had dipped to -23. Homeless people have taken to gathering around street fires to keep warm, and night shelters for the poor are overflowing.

Last winter up to 100 people died from the cold, with most victims coming from Uttar Pradesh. (See my blog of Jan 4, 2010.)

*A reminder that I’m giving a free talk on London's Disasters at Shoe Lane Library, 1, Little New Street, London EC4A 3JR tomorrow (January 4) at 1230.

Lockerbie + 22 - the tangled web

2010-12-21T10:26:00.003Z

On the 22^nd anniversary of Britain’s worst ever terrorist outrage – the Lockerbie bombing – the only man ever convicted of it, the Libyan Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, is said to be in a coma and close to death.

Later today, a US senator is due to unveil the results of his own personal inquiry into Megrahi’s compassionate release last year. What the authorities on both sides of the Atlantic seem desperate to prevent, though, is any inquiry into who really planted the bomb that blew up the Pan-Am jumbo.

Megrahi was released only after he agreed to drop his appeal against conviction, and ten days ago it was revealed that an 800 page dossier compiled by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, examining the flaws in the case against him, is to be kept under lock and key. The commission had identified at least six grounds for thinking Megrahi may have been wrongly convicted. The UK government has also rejected requests for a full public inquiry.

Dr Jim Swire, who daughter was one of the 270 victims of the bombing, believes Megrahi was released in order to prevent an appeal that the authorities might have found ‘very embarrassing’. Now two of the Libyan’s children say they are preparing to sue the powers-that-be in Scotland for wrongfully imprisoning their father. Will that lead to the issues finally being properly examined? Or will the authorities just pay up so they can maintain the silence? Come on Wikileaks!

Lancashire pit disaster exhibition

2010-12-18T10:29:00.002Z

A new exhibition at the Museum of Wigan Life in Lancashire commemorates the 100^th anniversary of the county’s worst ever mining disaster, and the third worst in British history.

On December 21, 1910, about 900 men and boys were working on the day shift at the Hulton Colliery No. 3 Bank Pit, Westhoughton, known locally as the Pretoria Pit. Just before eight o’ clock in the morning, flames shot out from the main shaft, following an explosion below.

In all 344 miners were killed. As ever they were drawn from tight-knit communities around the pit. One local woman lost her husband, four sons and two brothers. An inquest jury decided that the probable cause was that an overheated safety lamp had ignited gas and coal dust.

The worst mining disaster in British history occurred at Senghenydd, near Caerphilly, less than three years later, on October 14, 1913. A total of 440 miners died after an explosion there. The chief inspector of mines said there had been ‘a disquieting laxity in the management of the mine’, and the manager was fined £24 for five breaches of mining regulations.

For more on both disasters, see A Disastrous History of Britain. The exhibition at Wigan entitled ‘Don’t go down the mine’ runs until March 22, 2011.

http://www.wigan.gov.uk/News/PitExhibition.htm

Boat people

2010-12-16T15:58:00.002Z

The deaths of at least 28 people, and possibly many more, in the shipwreck on Christmas Island is a reminder of the lengths to which people desperate to leave their country will go. A flimsy wooden boat carrying suspected asylum seekers from Iraq and Iran was dashed onto jagged rocks in very high seas.

More than forty people have been rescued, but it may be that the boat was carrying more than 100. It is believed it may have been on its way from Indonesia to Australia. The engines seem to have failed, and the craft was quickly smashed to pieces. It seems to have managed to evade detection and the alarm was raised only when local residents heard screams from the passengers.

Perhaps the biggest unofficial exodus by sea ever mounted was by the Vietnamese boat people. During the late 1970’s, an estimated 2 million fled South Vietnam as the Communists took over.

Apart from the usual hazards of taking to the ocean in small and often unseaworthy vessels, they had to run the gauntlet of pirates, and even if they made it to refugee camps, they were often ill-treated there too. An estimated half million died.

A date for your diary

2010-12-12T18:49:00.003Z

I am giving a free talk on London's Disasters at Shoe Lane Library, 1, Little New Street, London EC4A 3JR at 1230 on January 4, 2011.

See you there!