Читать книгу The Worst World Disasters of All Time - Kevin Baker - Страница 5

A giant hailstone, that fell in Vivian, South Dakota, 2010.

Date: 850 AD.

Location: Roopkund Lake, India.

Disaster Type: Giant hailstones.

Fatalities: Hundreds of victims.

In 1942 a British forest guard stationed in northern India came across a strange frozen lake named Roopkund. The reason why the lake was such a shocking sight was that it was surrounded by hundreds of skeletons. From that moment on the discovery was a complete mystery, with the British government paranoid that it might be the bones of Japanese soldiers who were planning a land invasion, and others guessing that it was an epidemic, a landslide or mass suicide.

In 2004 a scientific expedition was sent to seek out an explanation as to how so many people died. After investigation, the surprising conclusion was that everyone had died from blows upon the head, with deep cracks clearly evident on the skulls of the victims.

What had actually happened is that back in around 850 AD a group of travelers, probably pilgrims, were caught out in the open with no shelter by a freak hailstorm with oversized hail. Can you imagine hail the size of cricket balls suddenly raining down upon you? The only way you would ever survive would be to crawl under a dead body, but there probably would have been no time as your body would take a series of lethal blows before you would even be able to consider this.

They could even have been bigger than cricket balls, as the largest recorded hailstone, found in Aurora, Nebraska, was about the size of a football at 7 inches in diameter.

In Bangladesh, almost 100 people were killed in 1986 by grapefruit sized hailstones that weighed more than 2 pounds. Hailstones can fall at a hundred miles per hour, so unless you have immediate shelter your number will be up!

The largest amount of people known to be killed in a freak hailstorm was in Chartres, France in 1360. A staggering 1,000 English soldiers were killed in the event and it was named ‘Black Monday.’ In King Edward’s attempt to conquer France he took a massive force across the English Channel. They burned and pillaged the suburbs of Paris, whilst French soldiers refused to fight them head on by instead choosing to remain behind protective walls. They then headed toward Chartres and camped outside of town. Lightening then struck down at the beginning of a sudden storm and killed 2 people, before massive hailstones hit the stunned troops, even killing men on horseback.

The upside to this is that it was seen as an act of God, which convinced King Edward to negotiate on peaceful terms with the French, at least for a while, during the Hundred Years War between England and France.