Year 536 Was the Worst Year to Be Alive - What Happened?

The term "

worst

year

ever" gets thrown around a lot these days, mostly on the Internet, and for reasons like I was disappointed in the latest Star Wars movie. But scientists and historians have actually argued that no

year

in the long history of this planet was worse than the year 536. While, of course, there have been many worthy contenders for

worst

year ever over the course of history, No year has been worse. had a more negative impact in the following decades. Today we are going to explain why the year 536 was the worst year to be

alive

. But before you begin, be sure to subscribe to the Weird History Channel.

Oh, and leave a comment too and tell us

what

part of the story you'd like us to explain next. Okay, now let's settle this once and for all: the year 536, the worst year of all time. While serving as a military advisor to Belisaurus, one of the Byzantine Empire's most distinguished generals, Byzantine historian Procopius noticed some trouble brewing in the air while traveling with his boss in Sicily in the year 536. He wrote about a sun that gave light. without shine, for like the moon, for all this year. And it looked a lot like the sun in eclipse, because the rays it gave off were not clear or like the ones it usually casts.

Translated, it was all dark outside, all the time. Of course, he was not the only one to notice that the sun seemed to be in a good mood during the year 536. Michael the Syrian, a Byzantine scribe, would later write about this period: "The sun became dark and its darkness lasted 18 each day. It shone for about four hours, and even this light was only a weak shadow. Everyone declared that the sun would never regain its full light. The fruits did not ripen and the wine tasted like sour grapes. This situation of weak sun cast a dark, non-metaphorical cloud over. the globe that darkened the sky for at least a full year in 536.

Researchers later discovered evidence of a massive volcanic eruption whose ash likely contributed greatly to the Seattle-like eruption. The weather, minus all the rain. , spreading ash and destruction on a global scale. Not to mention souring grapes and spoiling wine. So it's an easy hit for the year 536. Basic biology teaches us that plants need the sun to help them grow and. survival. Therefore, not having direct sunlight for at least a year affected crop production around the world and caused widespread famine around the world. And it's not just that the plants wanted to bask in the sun, but that it was too cold for the crops to grow.

With the sun shrouded in endless cloud, the Earth's temperature dropped between 1.6 and 2.5 degrees Celsius, or 34.88 to 36.5 degrees Fahrenheit for all you Americans who think that doesn't sound so bad. But it also cooled temperatures for decades to come. Crop shortages were reported everywhere during this period, including Ireland which suffered its own horrific food depletion which they called the "Bread Failure". A dusty veil covering the sun wasn't the only bad thing in the air for these poor people trying to live their lives in 536. There were also one or two pests waiting in the wings to attack these vitamin D-deprived immune systems.

No one was immune to this plague. It spread through the lower classes until it reached the Imperial Palace. The "symptoms," as it was affectionately described, began with a sore forming on the palm of the hand and progressed until the afflicted could not take a step. The leg was swollen. Then the buboes burst and pus came out. Obviously, if this same plague infected the world today, there would probably be a television show called Doctor Buboes, Pus Buster, and with it a new contender for worst year to live. With the plague beginning to circulate through Constantinople, the city began to stink, with piles of diseased corpses simply being thrown into the sea, only to resurface later.

There wasn't much burial planning back then. Bring your dead! There was more of a "make it happen" vibe around the Plague of Justinian. Emperor Justinian ordered the bodies to be removed from the city. I'm not dead. Oh, he says he's not dead. Yes it is. I am not! But all that did was expose more people to the disease, since healthy people were responsible for carrying sick and deceased bodies out of the cities. However, things were not all bad for Emperor Justinian, as the plague that claimed all these lives and turned the city into a smelly nightmare would later be called the "Plague of Justinian." That was probably good for him.

However, less so for the estimated 50 million people who died from it. Around the year 536, the weather in China began its journey toward madness, doing perfectly normal things like raining dust that you could pick up with your hands. Not only should it not rain dust, it certainly should not be able to be measured by spoonfuls. The Nan Shi, a 6th century chronicle, reported a yellow ash-like substance falling from the sky. They called their strange weather hui, or dust, and said it was yellow. It is unknown whether it was volcanic ash or simply some random and unexplained climatic reaction.

However, this was just the beginning of China's climate disruption. The chronicles of the southern dynasties reported a rare summer-to-winter weather phenomenon with frost in mid-summer and snow in August. As a Southern California girl in Chicago in January, the crops weren't there for this cold snap. Summer crops were destroyed. And the city of, along with others, was plunged into a deadly famine that lasted two years and caused the death of around 70% to 80% of the population. Researchers discovered evidence deep in the ice sheets of Iceland and Greenland that indicated a major volcanic event occurred around 536. Volcanic eruptions in Iceland in 540 and 547 thrust people into the literal Middle Ages, with ash covering the skies and blocking out the brightness and heat.

Sun in the sky, which people in the 6th century were beginning to get used to having nearby. Based on later-discovered tropical volcanic ash, some scholars have suggested that a volcano in El Salvador exploded around the year 535 or 536. Others noted that a volcanic eruption in North America contributed to dark skies around the world. When combined with the two Icelandic volcanic eruptions, it began and was adorably called the "Little Ice Age of Late Antiquity." This cute little ice age cooled the planet for at least a decade and caused crops and, later, people to die. Both directly from hunger and indirectly, a malnourished population was more susceptible to diseases, of which there were plenty.

Well, there's one thing you certainly couldn't say had a bad year: exploding volcanoes. By the time the 6th century arrived, the Romans had migrated east to Constantinople. And, under the guidance of Emperor Justinian, the Romans sought to return to the glory days of the empire, like a high school graduate still wandering around campus wearing his letterman jacket. I mean, it's great. Although some of Justinian's generals were successful in this genius objective (most notably Belisaurus, who fought against several different armies, including Goths, Vandals, and others), Justinian himself was unable to reflect success due to constant uprisings and instability. imperial.

Those pesky lifts always get in the way of success. To add illness to the defeats of war, the Byzantine Empire would never fully recover from the disease and famine caused by the events of 536. The Byzantine Empire lost between 35% and 55% of its population in the year 541. Once the bubonic plague hit, it did

what

the plague did best: kill depressingly high percentages of entire populations. Historians believe that the plague could have been carried by plague-infested rats traveling on military trains during this attempt to return the Roman Empire to its peak, which clearly backfired. The horribleness of 536 did not discriminate.

The Moche civilization of Peru would also not count 536 as its main year. The Moche civilization, once a dominant force in the region, was known for being avid fishermen and developers of an advanced irrigation system that allowed the growth of a variety of crops. Their agricultural talents were the backbone of their economy. But the climatic conditions of the 6th century caused their pockets to suffer a severe blow. It was around this time that an unusually strong El Niño weather system caused the waters to warm, decimating the fish supply. The strange weather system also caused severe flooding, which ruined their irrigation systems and devastated their ability to grow enough food to feed their population.

People, probably tired of hearing Twitter users claim that X and X was the worst year ever, a group of academics set out to set the record straight once and for all. Harvard historian Michael McCormick and a group of academics decided to break away from the age-old scientific question: What was the worst year to be

alive

? However, this was not initially the ultimate goal of McCormick and his group of 12 interdisciplinary scholars. The group met to study the use of metals, coinage, and changes in monetary systems in the 7th century. Somewhere in this exciting topic, one probably began to wonder if they were having the worst year of their life.

Their findings included an analysis of volcanic fragments from an Icelandic volcano in ice core samples from Swiss glaciers that, yes, dated back to the year 536, confirming the volcanic event that plunged much of the northern hemisphere into unprecedented darkness. triggering a global catastrophe. . Yes, but in 1998 Armageddon and Deep Impact were released. And people had to choose between which two asteroid-based action movies they liked best. That's a difficult year. The planet left behind abundant evidence of climate trauma that resulted in a chain of climate events that led to real human suffering. Remember, we only have one Earth, everyone.

Please recycle. Dendrochronologists, people who study tree rings to determine their age because it's a science and not a wild guess, noticed some disturbing patterns emerging when examining Icelandic trees. The rings indicated a period when the tree's growth had slowed, suggesting that significant cooling had occurred in the mid-6th century. This, combined with ice core evidence newly unearthed in 2018, helped date the time of the catastrophic event that ruined the Earth, for a time, to the year 536. When researching which was the worst year to live, things don't They were always so gloomy. In fact, the research initiated by our friends at Harvard ended on a positive note.

While the events of 536 were the spark for some truly literal dark days in our planet's history, researchers were also able to find the moments when things really started to change. When researching coinage, they noted the reappearance of lead in ice core samples, indicating that people were producing silver again for money. Ah, capitalism, the life force of us all. Experts argued that the prevalence of silver meant that more coins were produced, which was a sign of a prosperous economy. The lesson is that no matter how bad it seems, it will almost always get better, almost always. So what do you think?

Would you like to enter a time machine and play the ultimate game of Survivor? Let us know in the comments below. And while you're at it, check out some of these other videos from our Weird History.