{"id":4406,"date":"2016-12-30T15:15:54","date_gmt":"2016-12-30T15:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=4406"},"modified":"2016-12-30T15:15:54","modified_gmt":"2016-12-30T15:15:54","slug":"2016-a-bad-year-try-1914-1918-1939-or-1945","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=4406","title":{"rendered":"2016 A Bad Year? Try 1914, 1918, 1939 or 1945!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Everybody keeps whinging about how bad 2016 has been.<\/p>\n<p>A few old people died (and some not so old people). That&#8217;s sad, but it happens every year. And yes some of your childhood heroes died &#8211; that&#8217;s what happens when you get older.<\/p>\n<p>And yes a few bad political things have happened in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>But is it somehow specially bad? Try comparing it with some other notoriously bad years :-<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td>1914<\/td>\n<td>Start of WWI which eventually killed millions of combatants.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>1918<\/td>\n<td>The beginning of the so-called Spanish flu pandemic which eventually killed up to 100 million people around the world.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>1939<\/td>\n<td>Start of WWII which eventually killed millions of combatants, and we learned just how evil humans can be when they put their minds to it.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td>1945<\/td>\n<td>The first use of nuclear weapons.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>So however bad you thought 2016 was, there have been a few other years\u00a0<em>far<\/em> worse.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-4096\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014-05-10-square-tower-selfie.jpg?resize=695%2C883&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"695\" height=\"883\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014-05-10-square-tower-selfie.jpg?resize=806%2C1024&amp;ssl=1 806w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014-05-10-square-tower-selfie.jpg?resize=236%2C300&amp;ssl=1 236w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014-05-10-square-tower-selfie.jpg?resize=768%2C976&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/really.zonky.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014-05-10-square-tower-selfie.jpg?w=980&amp;ssl=1 980w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 695px) 100vw, 695px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everybody keeps whinging about how bad 2016 has been. A few old people died (and some not so old people). That&#8217;s sad, but it happens every year. And yes some of your childhood heroes died &#8211; that&#8217;s what happens when you get older. And yes a few bad political things have happened in 2016. But <a href='https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=4406' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-7-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-194","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4406"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4408,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4406\/revisions\/4408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}