10 Worst Ways History Has Repeated Itself

Take it from Vizzini, the bald kidnapper in "The Princess Bride": "Never get involved in a land war in Asia!" Or, at the very least, get out of Russia before winter. That's the lesson both Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler learned during their failed attempts to attack the massive Eurasian country. True, these were pretty bad dudes and the world is better off because they lost. But the horrific suffering of their armies nevertheless made the invasions similarly "inconceivable!"

In June 1812, Napoleon assembled an army of 600,000 to invade Moscow and subdue his former ally, Czar Alexander I [source: PBS]. As he marched into Russia, it was typhus-carrying lice, not enemy soldiers that began to take a toll on his forces. But despite typhus and trench fever, a weakened French army reached Moscow on Sept. 14, declaring victory in the largely vacated city [source: Knight]. On the return trip, however, temperatures plummeted to -34.6 degrees Fahrenheit (-37 Celsius), freezing the beleaguered soldiers' lips together and killing thousands of horses. Facing such harsh conditions with little food, as few as 10,000 men made it back home [sources: Brenstrum, Brinch].

Fast-forward to 1941 as Hitler's army began its own June invasion of Soviet Union, known as Operation Barbarossa. Believing victory would take only a few months — and despite owning several books about Napoleon — the Nazi leader sent his troops into battle ill prepared for the impending winter. Again, plummeting temperatures and a lack of warm coats and hats meant many returned home without ears, noses, fingers and even eyelids. By the end of Barbarossa, more than 800,000 Soviets had been killed, and another 6 million were wounded or captured. Another 775,000 Germans soldier were casualties, too, making Barbarossa one of the deadliest military operations in history.

In late 2007 the United States economy went into a tailspin. The stock market dropped like a lead balloon while the only thing going up, it seemed, was unemployment. Predictably, commentators soon began to make doomsday comparisons between the "Great Recession," as it became known, and the Great Depression of the 1930s. But was this really a repeat?

Certainly, the similarities were concerning. Both were preceded by periods of prosperity. Both came at a time when banks were experimenting with new ways of doing business (consumer credit in the 1920s and pooling mortgage debt in the 2000s). Both even followed asset bubbles, which occur when prices exceed what something is actually worth (Florida real estate and the stock market in the 1920s, and tech companies and real estate in the 2000s) [source: Geewax]. And then there was the sharp stock market decline in the first 18 months after the initial crash: 45 percent during the Great Depression and 54 percent during the Great Recession [source: Jacobsen].

By and large, however, the Great Depression was much worse. Its 43-month duration made the 18-month Great Recession seem mild by comparison. In the period after the 1929 crash, unemployment rose 19.3 percentage points compared to rising just 5.7 percentage points after 2007. And remember all the banks that failed during the Great Recession? There were 443, which seems high until you consider that some 9,000 closed during the Great Depression [source: Geewax]. Ouch.

You know those messages that get posted on social media claiming to reveal supposedly shocking coincidences between two historical events? If you're like many people, you probably can't find the delete button fast enough. But if not, you might have seen the one about the remarkable similarities between the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.

While some of those claims have been debunked (it is the internet after all), some are true. Yep, both presidents were shot on Fridays with a fatal bullet to the head. Their successors were both named Johnson; Andrew Johnson was born in 1808 and Lyndon Johnson in 1908.

Both assassins — John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald — have 15 letters in their names. And, most peculiarly, Booth escaped from a theater and was captured in a warehouse (well, a tobacco shed), and Oswald fled a warehouse and was caught in a theater [source: Snopes].

These are pretty intriguing similarities, but before we declare a rip in the space-time continuum, consider this: There are a lot of other things that aren't similar. Lincoln and JFK weren't shot with the same gun. It wasn't the same time of day. Heck, it wasn't even in the same city. Perhaps, as some experts believe, it's simply human nature to look for patterns even if there really aren't any [source: Shermer].

When people think of genocide, chances are their minds quickly turn to the Holocaust. During the horrific event, Nazi Germany systematically rounded up and imprisoned Jews, gays, Roma people, communists and others who did not fit into Hitler's worldview.

Some 11 million concentration camp prisoners ultimately died from starvation, exhaustion or execution. It was so terrible, in fact, that German schools now mandate teaching of the Holocaust in hopes that future generations will never repeat the mistakes of their past [source: Frontline]. And other countries have pledged to stop it if it does happen. " ... never again will the world ... fail to act in time to prevent this terrible crime of genocide," U.S. President Jimmy Carter proclaimed in 1979 [source: Holocaust Museum].

But sadly there have been as many as two dozen instances of genocide since the Holocaust [source: Inter-Parliamentary Alliance]. That figure depends on how genocide is defined, but generally it involves violent crimes carried out against a group of people with the ultimate intent to exterminate them. Take Cambodia's Khmer Rouge, which, between 1975 and 1979, killed as many as 2 million political dissidents — a shocking one-third of the country's population.

Just 15 years later, during a 100-day span in 1994, Rwanda's Hutu government killed between one-half and 1 million Tutsis. Such crimes continue into the 21st century, as some leaders have accused Syrian president Bashar al-Assad of killing his own people to retain power [source: Holocaust Museum].

It's a classic Hollywood storyline: A new disease pops up and spreads worldwide, much faster than science can come up with a cure. But this isn't just the stuff of action films. It's called a pandemic, and it's happened more than once in our history.

One that's still pretty well-known, despite the passage of several hundred years, is the Black Death, aka the plague. The plague originated in Asia, reaching Europe by the late 1340s, where it killed a staggering number of people. Because the records back then weren't entirely thorough, no one is completely sure how many died, but estimates range from 25 million to 100 million [source: WHO]. Either way, it was nothing to sneeze at. In some cities, so few people survived that there was no one to bury the dead [source: Kennedy].

But that only happened before modern medicine, right? Not exactly. Another pandemic began just four decades ago and continues to claim lives today: AIDS. This disease originated in Africa as early as 1920, but didn't spread worldwide until the 1980s [source: McCoy]. Since then, somewhere between 63 million and 89 million people have been infected with HIV, and 30 million to 42 million of those have died [source: UNAIDS]. That means, incredibly, that AIDS may have killed as many people — or even more — than the Black Death.

While the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic that began in late 2019 likely won't kill anywhere near that many people, its numbers are still chilling. Despite the rapid development of several effective vaccines within its first year, COVID-19 has infected some 24 million people as of October 2021 and killed nearly 5 million worldwide [source: Worldometer]. With many countries currently unable to obtain vaccines, and a stubborn percentage of the population refusing to get them, the virus continues to kill.

Sadly, as these recent pandemics show, despite all that we know about diseases, they still live on thanks to unsanitary conditions, cultural misunderstandings and a lack of education. Even the plague still rears its ugly head from time to time, particularly in developing countries in Africa and Asia. Which makes you wonder: Will we learn from these past pandemics, or are we setting ourselves up for more?

The RMS Titanic. It's inspired countless documentaries, an Academy Award-winning motion picture, and not one, but several museums. You'd think from all that attention it must be the deadliest shipwreck of all time. But it's not even close.

Almost everyone, Leonardo DiCaprio fan or not, knows the basic story of the Titanic. In 1912 it set sail on its maiden voyage from England to New York, a luxurious and modern passenger liner that the builders claimed was "practically unsinkable." An iceberg in the North Atlantic proved them wrong, and the ship went down along with 1,503 of the passengers and crew [source: Louden-Brown]. A number of miscalculations by the builders, and the ship's captain — but most famously its shortage of lifeboats — led to the Titanic's demise.

Decades later, in December 1987, the ferry Doña Paz departed Tachloban in the Philippines bound for Manila. It was packed with people traveling for the Christmas holiday: some 4,000 passengers on a ship built to carry only about 1,400. Disaster struck in the Tablas Strait when the ferry collided with an oil tanker, causing a massive explosion that quickly sank both ships. A passing ship pulled a couple dozen survivors out of the water, but as many as 4,375 perished [source: Jackson]. It is still the world's worst peacetime maritime disaster and has even been called "Asia's Titanic" [source: National Geographic Channel].

Tornadoes are bad news. These storms have proven time and time again that they can level large swaths of communities unfortunate enough to fall in their paths. Because of this deadly potential, people in Tornado Alley routinely flee to basements, closets and bathrooms when severe weather threatens. Usually, it's a false alarm. But sometimes a twister does touch down. And every great once in a while, one will strike twice in the same place in just a few years, months or even hours.

One such repeat happened in Harvest, Alabama, in March 2012. The town, which had just been hit by a tornado the previous April, found itself in the crosshairs of another powerful storm. Following a path nearly identical to the one before it, the tornado destroyed many of the same homes that had been repaired or rebuilt since the last disaster. Incredibly, this was the fourth tornado to hit Harvest since 1974 [source: Ariosto].

That's nothing compared to the 23 tornadoes that have hit tiny Moore, Oklahoma, since the late 1800s, including five in a five-year span. The deadliest event was May 3, 1999, when that year's tornado killed 36 and injured nearly 600 [source: NBC News].

Possibly the creepiest twister repeats occurred in Codell, Kansas, in 1916, 1917 and 1918. Not only did they strike during three consecutive years, but they all happened on the same day: May 20. The first two twisters, rated F2 and F3, didn't take any lives and caused only minimal damage. But the third was a powerful F4 that tore straight through the middle of town. Again, no one was killed — perhaps because the town had wised up to the weather's repeat antics [source: Kansas Historical Society].

Dam disasters are particularly dangerous because, unlike other structures, you don't have to be on or near them to be hurt when they fail. A catastrophic collapse can send millions, or even billions, of gallons of water into communities miles downstream. It's happened dozens of times, sometimes because of poor design and other times because of just downright bad luck.

One of the United States' most infamous dam collapses happened May 31, 1889, just outside of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Looming just upstream was the South Fork Dam, which commenced operation in 1853 and had, disturbingly, already failed twice before. Because of poor construction and some equally misguided maintenance decisions, the dam failed, sending 3.6 billion gallons (16.4 billion liters) of water into the communities below. When the waters receded, 2,209 people were dead [source: National Park Service].

Despite the failure at Johnstown, few standards existed when dam builder extraordinaire William Mulholland built the St. Francis Dam in San Francisquito Canyon outside of Los Angeles in 1926. The first sign of trouble appeared on the morning of March 12, 1928, when water began pouring from one side of the concrete structure. By midnight it had collapsed, sending water and debris through town after downstream town. No one knows exactly how many people perished, but some estimates are as high as 600 [source: Blitz]. While there were many reasons for the dam's collapse, Mulholland and his subordinates used poor judgment throughout its construction [source: Association of State Dam Safety Officials].

Mass killings are in the news a lot lately, and perhaps the most tragic are those that occur in schools. Whether it's at a college like Virginia Tech, a high school like Columbine or an elementary school like Sandy Hook, the taking of young lives is an incredibly heartbreaking event.

One of the more tragic school massacres occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. That's where a 20-year-old man arrived at 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 14, 2012, with two handguns and an assault rifle in tow. He had already killed his mother when he shot his way into the school and killed 20 students and six adults before turning the gun on himself. The children were just 6 and 7 years old [source: CNN].

People in the United States hoped that the senselessness of Sandy Hook might end school shootings, but it did not. It seemed to just embolden more shooters. In February 2018, a 19-year-old boy killed 17 students and wounded 14 more at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, a school from which he had been expelled. His weapon of choice: a semi-automatic rifle [source: Chuck, et al]. Then, just a few months later, another 17-year-old boy killed nine students and one teacher at Santa Fe High School near Houston, using a .35 revolver and shotgun [source: Hanna, et al]. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting did spur the March For Our Lives movement by students, which demands an end to gun violence.

Many people think such killings are a recent phenomenon, but the deadliest school massacre occurred nearly a century ago in Bath, Michigan. In 1927, school board member Andrew Kehoe spent several months wiring the Bath School with explosives before detonating them May 18. The blasts killed 45 people, including 38 children. Like Lanza, Kehoe first killed a family member (his wife, Nellie) and later killed himself. While it was a terrible tragedy, it could have been even worse: Just 100 (45 kilograms) of the 600 pounds (272 kilograms) of dynamite Kehoe planted actually detonated as planned [source: Larson].

When you talk about mass extinctions, you're not talking recent history. You're talking geological history. But this is, without a doubt, the worst way history has repeated itself. Why? Mass extinctions occur when more than 75 percent of all species on Earth die off in a relatively short geological period — less than 2.8 million years [source: Begum]. It's happened five times over the past 500 million years, and some scientists think we're in the early throes of the sixth.

One of the most notable of the "Big Five" extinctions, as they are known, is the Cretaceous-Tertiary event. It happened about 66 million years ago, when volcanic activity, climate change and an asteroid impact wiped out 76 percent of all species, including the dinosaurs. But the granddaddy of them all was the Permian mass extinction, also known as the Great Dying: A massive eruption in Siberia sparked a catastrophic chain reaction that killed an incredible 96 percent of all species [source: Begum].

Now some scientists claim the sixth mass extinction is already underway. That's because species are going extinct at a much faster rate than normal — possibly three to 12 times faster. That gives us three to 22 centuries to do something before we reach mass extinction territory, which is certainly something we don't want to repeat [source: Pappas].