5 Historical Disasters That Took Place on Christmas

5 Black Christmas in Hong Kong

At first, you’d think a story about a long battle that finally ended on Christmas would be heartwarming. Two sides meeting in no mans land to exchange gifts and agree the whole thing had been a little silly. But that wasn’t the case when the Battle of Hong Kong ended on Christmas Day in 1941. 

Hong Kong’s governor, Sir Mark Aitchison Young, finally surrendered on December 25th, ending a three-week battle that had left 4,000 civilians and 2,000 troops dead. Sadly, the surrender wasn’t received with any level of mercy by the Japanese. Instead, they occupied Hong Kong, and what had been a battle turned into an extended period of mistreatment, torture and deportation. 

Prisoners of war also endured horrific conditions, the kind that might have been prevented by the 1929 Geneva Convention if Japan had actually ratified it. By 1942, they would agree to follow the convention, a year too late for the horrors bequeathed on Hong Kong as one of history’s worst holiday gifts.

4 The Italian Hall Disaster

The Italian Hall Disaster is a very deadly example for anyone wondering why it’s illegal to yell fire in a crowded theater. In 1913, striking copper miners in Michigan were celebrating Christmas Eve with their families at a party put on by their union, the Western Federation of Miners. The event was held at the Italian Hall in Calumet. 

At some point during the festivities, someone in attendance yelled that there was a fire, and a panic ensued. In the mad dash to get out of the building, the 600 or so attendees funneled through a single stairwell that proved to be a fatal chokepoint. Seventy-three people, 59 of whom were children, would die in the crush of bodies. One particularly dark detail to emerge afterwards was that there had never been a fire at all. Some still suspect that the panic was started on purpose by a strikebreaker.

3 The Christmas Flood in The Netherlands

Look closer at the painting above, and you’ll realize what might have looked like shoals are in fact the tops of houses. Then you realize that this seascape really should have been a landscape, barring a horrible turn of fate.

To this day, the storm in 1717 on Christmas Eve that sent parts of Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands for an unplanned swim is one of the deadliest storms in European history. By pure body count, the devastation is already pretty obvious, with the flood claiming over 13,000 lives. Even those lucky enough to come out above sea level had a lot of suffering ahead, with farms, houses and entire settlements washed away. 

As if they hadn’t been through enough, the flood was followed by freezing winds, just to make sure no one could feel even the slightest tinge of gratitude.

2 The Deadliest Tsunami Ever

In 2004, the day after Christmas, one of the largest earthquakes in history rumbled beneath the Indian Ocean. That same day, a tsunami created by the record tectonic movement would reach the coast of multiple countries, including Indonesia, India, Thailand and Sri Lanka. Hundred-foot waves left coastal cities without even a slight chance of survival, and populations and houses were wiped off the map like an uncaring God was power-washing a garage driveway. 

Across multiple populations, the tsunami would result in the death of roughly 230,000 people.

1 The Ku Klux Klan Was Founded

Talk about a group of people that Christ probably wouldn’t love sharing a birthday with. 

On Christmas Eve, 1865, instead of sharing a meal with their loving families, a group met and officially formed the Ku Klux Klan. In case you've just crawled out from under your rock, the Ku Klux Klan were (and are) a violent, racist terrorist organization in support of bigoted viewpoints that you used to have to wear a mask to express in safety. Back then, they were broken up by militia groups and eventually suppressed by military force. 

If they were founded today, we’d probably get a primetime special on how they’re a “symptom of our society abandoning young white males.”