35. History’s Worst Natural Disaster
As tragic as the 1887 Yellow River Flood was, at an estimated 900,000 fatalities, that horrific figure qualified it as “only” history’s second-worst natural disaster. The fatalities were eclipsed by yet another Chinese riverine calamity: the 1931 Central China Flood.
That year, the Yangtze and Huai rivers experienced disastrous flooding that submerged about 70,000 square miles – an area as big as England, plus half of Scotland tossed in. 53 million people were impacted, and up to 4 million lives were claimed in the catastrophe.