It's not uncommon to hear people complain that things in the U.S. are worse now than they've ever been before. For example, a standard refrain of those who would like mandatory prayer in school is that the lack of institutionalized prayer is responsible for school shootings, teen pregnancy and even natural disasters. They talk as if nothing bad used to happen to people.
Of course, these people have an appallingly bad sense of history. When something like the Virginia Tech Massacre occurs, there's no sense of historical perspective. As horrific as it was, Virginia Tech wasn't even the largest mass murder in a U.S. school in our history.
So, for those who seem to think that nothing comparable to current tragedies used to happen, I give you the following links. All are fascinating stories, all are heartbreaking, and all are horribly appalling.
Albert Fish (1920's)
Cocoanut Grove Fire (1942)
Texas City Disaster (1947)
Bath School Disaster (1927)
H.H. Holmes (1890's)
2 comments:
Hey, thanks; I read the Albert Fish story right after breakfast. It was so horribly gruesome, though, that I remained sort of detatched from it; like it was too awful to register as real to my mind. Absolutely unbelievable.
Yeah, it's "shocking" to find out that the same kind of stuff that happens now also happened during the "good old days", isn't it?
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