To name one historic disaster, a friend and I were discussing The Great Fire of London, which I had read about on this site.

http://www.todayinliterature.com/stories.asp?Event_Date=9/2/1666

On this day in 1666, the Great Fire of London began, enkindled by the King's baker when he failed to damp his oven properly. While only sixteen people died, eighty per cent of the City was razed over four days, leaving 436 acres leveled and 100,000 homeless. The Diary of Samuel Pepys is by no means our only eye-witness record, but it describes the event in compelling human detail, from the first horrified sighting of "an infinite great fire" on the 2nd to a walkabout on the 5th "with our feet ready to burn."

On the subject of large fires, on Oct. 8 1871 a large fire occurred here in this country and grabbed all the headlines...the Great Chicago fire occurred on that date.

What most people don't know, is that another fire occurred on that same day, and caused the greatest loss of life of any fire in American history...it happened in the logging town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and the surrounding areas, and more people died in this fire than died in the next two worst fires combined. 1,125 people lost their lives that day, yet Chicago got all the headlines.

http://www.library.wisc.edu/etext/WIReader/WER2002-0.html

That's very interesting. Rather like what's happening right now. All the attention on New Orleans, Mississippi in the background.

Originally posted by Vilepagan
..it happened in the logging town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and the surrounding areas, and more people died in this fire than died in the next two worst fires combined.

I think if you go to school in Wisconsin you're required to learn about the Peshtigo fire.

Originally posted by LionelHutz
I think if you go to school in Wisconsin you're required to learn about the Peshtigo fire.

I had no doubt you'd heard of it Lionel. :)

I can't remember the town off the top of my head but there was a huge flood because of a damn break lots of folks died{happened in the US}

was it the Johnstown flood?

http://www.nps.gov/jofl/home.htm

One should not forget the great San Francisco Earthquake.

Galveston's Hurricane of 1900
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galveston%2C_Texas

In 1900, the island was struck by a devasting hurricane, an event that still holds the record as the United States' deadliest natural disaster. Had it not been for the Hurricane of 1900 and the dredging of the Houston Ship Channel, Galveston would arguably be a more prominent city than it is today.

On the evening of September 7, 1900, high winds arose, heralding the arrival of a hurricane that struck the island in the early morning of September 8 and lasted until the next day. Wind speeds reached up to 135 mph (an estimate, since the anemometer was blown off of the U.S. Weather Bureau building). The island's infrastructure was devastated, and an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 people were killed, making the hurricane the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States.

And of course there's Bangladesh, which seems to disappear underwater about once a year when the typhoon hits.

August 24 AD 79

Mt. Vesuvius destroys Pompeii.

March 15, 1941 -

the most severe blizzard in modern history struck North Dakota and Minnesota. The blizzard hit on a Saturday night while many were traveling and resulted in the tragic loss of 71 lives. Winds gusted to 75 mph at Duluth, Minnesota and to 85 mph at Grand Forks, North Dakota. Snow drifts reached 12 feet in north central Minnesota.

Not to disparage that blizzard, but the blizzard of 1947 in Milwaukee was at least that bad. Here is what one site had to say about it.



January 28-30, 1947. 18.0 inches.

Arguably the worst snowstorm that ever struck Milwaukee. The three-day
snowfall total from records was 18 inches, but this amount is likely to be
far below the actual amount that fell, due to the considerable blowing and
drifting. During the height of the storm the winds were northeast at 25 to
45 mph and visibilities were near zero in the moderate to heavy snow and
blowing snow. Huge drifts, as high as 15 feet, brought all traffic to a
standstill and not until the 31st was partial train and streetcar service
restored. All stores, factories, offices, and schools were closed from two
to four days with many people stranded in cars, buses, trains, railroad
depots, and hotel lobbies. The snowstorm was perhaps the longest, worst, and
most costliest in Milwaukee history.

Originally posted by Imagineer
January 28-30, 1947. 18.0 inches.

Oh come on, when I was in school in Minneapolis we got 23 inches in 24 hours on Halloween.

18 inches is an estimate that everyone believes was low. The problem was that there was so much drifting that no one could find a typical place to measure the actual snowfall. The fifteen foot drifts in the city shut things down for several days. Snowfall in Wisconsin is certainly not the disaster that the other items mentioned in this thread are. It was a major inconvenience, however. Although I was not alive at the time, I have heard the stories from my parents, and that was a truly memorable storm.
A snowstorm in Wisconsin that shuts down everything for several days is a rarity. Mostly snowstorms shut things down for a maximum of a day, as I'm sure you remember. Even then, people can move around if they want to. This actually stranded people. I have seen the pictures of people who were forced to spend several days waiting to be able to get home. They had to bring in construction equipment to dig out snowplows that were drifted in on the roads.

I've always been interested in volcanic explosions. ....the one at Krakatoa is esp interesting.
I've read that the explosion could be heard as far away as TEXAS, and was the loudest sound ever heard on this planet. The island literelly blew apart and sent huge chunks of boulders sky-high. It triggered massive tsunamis which killed tens of thousands. Now THAT'S a disaster. The Mt. St. Pierre eruption was also terrible. No one stood a chance when they allee nuente ( gas cloud) came out of the mountain at the speed of sound and gassed or burned people where they stood........out of a population of thousands, I believe there were only one or two survivors.

The 1964 earthquake in Anchorage, Alaska was also a major if largely forgotten disaster. It did not kill all that many people, but the area was not nearly as developed as it is today. Today, Anchorage is the terminus of the oil pipeline across Alaska, and at any given time several oil tankers are loading there.
Here is a decent site that has some interesting photos.

http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/hazard/slideset/7/7_thumbs.shtml

The earthquake killed people as far away as the coast of California and Oregon because of the Tsunami's.

The one that killed the dinosaurs.

Bah, i doubt the dinosaurs were wiped out in one foul swoop from one event. Several would have contributed over those hundreds of millions of years, time change causing droughts, floods, ice ages come, meteors, earthquakes, massive volcanic eruptions that alter the atmosphere for a time, etc.
Many no longer exist because of little thing called "evolution", while many species were "naturally selected" to die ;)

Originally posted by rendova
I've always been interested in volcanic explosions. ....the one at Krakatoa is esp interesting.
I've read that the explosion could be heard as far away as TEXAS, and was the loudest sound ever heard on this planet. The island literelly blew apart and sent huge chunks of boulders sky-high. It triggered massive tsunamis which killed tens of thousands. Now THAT'S a disaster. The Mt. St. Pierre eruption was also terrible. No one stood a chance when they allee nuente ( gas cloud) came out of the mountain at the speed of sound and gassed or burned people where they stood........out of a population of thousands, I believe there were only one or two survivors.

Believe it or not, the island of Crete (home of the famous bull riding people under king Minos), at the height of their power spread to other islands in the area. On the isle of Thera (a colony of Crete), a highly developed civilization came along just north of Crete. They never fought, had no defense systems or army, and technological and artistic strides were made, resulting in a highly developed civilization greater than that of King Minos.
The island was a volcano, and one day the island started rumbling, so all manner of men abandoned quickly to Peloponnesia.
The volcano erupted, resulting in what has been calculated to be the greatest in history (As far back as humans are concerned ;)) like 50 hydrogen bombs going of at the same little spot. The island split into peices, much of which sank under the sea, other was covered in ash, and no life exists on that much smaller island.
This caused a MASSIVE tital wave across the meditteranean that wiped out much of Crete sans the city of Knossos. Egypt felt its great might.
Ash went into the air, spreading through the atmosphere and the sky was dark like night for days in Egypt, and evidence in very old trees in CAlifornia and China shows evidence of the cloud reaching there (the layers of the tree were dark and ash colored if you cut it open and look at the rings from that time).

Huge disaster that resulted in lots of repercussions all over Earth's civilizations.

PS- Crete's King Minos had a mighty, huge bull he kept under his palace that was used in the famous bull riding contests. This was suspected to be the birth of the mythical Minotaur, although it was not half man.
When the tital wave was triggered, the water receded along the coasts, including the area (this was back at the time of Moses) where moses crossed the sea. The area was so pulled back that the hebrews could cross, and it smashed the Egyptians hours and hours later. Talk about miraculous timing. :)
The island of thera and its highly developed civilization that disappeared into the sea (both the people and much of the island) has been examined as the mythical island of Plato's Atlantis, it fits the decription.

But those are all just theories, but still pretty cool, see how much you learned :D

Interesting stuff, Evak. Seems to me there WAS such a place as Atlantis and this destroyed it..after all, there really was a Troy. Too bad!

Originally posted by Dan Fussell
The one that killed the dinosaurs.

i've always had a bit of trouble with this idea.
If it was indeed a meteor that hit Earth and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, why did turtles and crocs survive? They were alive and flourishing at that time.
I believe it was natural selection that killed the giant beasts. Too bad about that as well. Who wouldn't want a pet Stegosaurus to take to school for show and tell?!

Interesting stuff, Evak. Seems to me there WAS such a place as Atlantis and this destroyed it..after all, there really was a Troy. Too bad!

Despite the fact that Troy (the famous trojan war was most likely over trade routes and control of the aegean from what we have gathered over time) was discovered to have existed long before i was born, i still would not have doubted that there was a place called troy or one that it was based upon and there were wars with them and various greek cities over both civilizations' lifetimes (they went to war all the time, crazy greeks, ;))

i've always had a bit of trouble with this idea.
If it was indeed a meteor that hit Earth and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, why did turtles and crocs survive? They were alive and flourishing at that time.
I believe it was natural selection that killed the giant beasts. Too bad about that as well. Who wouldn't want a pet Stegosaurus to take to school for show and tell?!

Yea,

Several would have contributed over those hundreds of millions of years, time change causing droughts, floods, ice ages come, meteors, earthquakes, massive volcanic eruptions that alter the atmosphere for a time, etc.
Many no longer exist because of little thing called "evolution", while many species were "naturally selected" to die

Although the idea of a massive meteor striking the earth and altering the atmosphere seems plausible to an extent, i believe that they died over the eons. Thus we have different eras spanning thousands of years of radically different species of those giant lizards, their fish and mammal counterparts and the insects. Darwin's brilliant ideas definitely can come into play here.

Originally posted by Evakian
Although the idea of a massive meteor striking the earth and altering the atmosphere seems plausible to an extent, i believe that they died over the eons. Thus we have different eras spanning thousands of years of radically different species of those giant lizards, their fish and mammal counterparts and the insects. Darwin's brilliant ideas definitely can come into play here.

The fossil evidence records that there have been several events, or periods, where massive extinctions took place in a relatively short time, not the eons you suggest. While the cause of these extinctions is still debated, a slow evolutionary process doesn't seem the likely explanation.

A brief description of the five worst extinction events in prehistory:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/extinction_sidebar_000907.html

Originally posted by Vilepagan
The fossil evidence records that there have been several events, or periods, where massive extinctions took place in a relatively short time, not the eons you suggest. While the cause of these extinctions is still debated, a slow evolutionary process doesn't seem the likely explanation.

A brief description of the five worst extinction events in prehistory:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/extinction_sidebar_000907.html
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Yes, the piles of fossils found in layers indicate a sudden death.