Down Through History

For John, BLUF:  Things have been much worse than they were over the last 15 months.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Think 2020 was bad?  Historians say 536 was worst year ever to be alive

From United Press International, by Reporter Mark Puleo, 13 APRIL 2021, 1:37 PM.

Here is the lede plus four:

You wake up to a dark, dreary, glum-feeling, Monday-type of morning. For the 547th consecutive day. Just 18 months prior, you were a hard-working farmer gearing up for another bountiful crop season.

But then the skies went dark. From early 536 to 537, they stayed dark.

Across much of eastern Europe and throughout Asia, spring turned into summer and fall gave way to winter without a day of sunshine. Like a blackout curtain over the sun, millions of people across the world's most populated countries squinted through dim conditions, breathing in chokingly thick air and losing nearly every crop they were relying on to harvest.

This isn't the plot of a dystopian TV drama or a fantastical "docu-fiction" production. This was a harsh reality for the millions of people that lived through that literally dark time -- or, as some historians have declared, the very worst year ever to be alive.

"For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year, and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear nor such as it is accustomed to shed," was the grim account Procopius, a prominent scholar who became the principal Byzantine historian of the 6th century, gave in History of the Wars.

It reminds me of the old line, "Cheer up, things could be worse."  "So, I cheered up and things got worse.".

Here is a case of things being worse.  Much worse.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff