David Wallechinsky - The Book of Lists

From 1519 to 1526 Hernando Cortes, commanding a small Spanish military expedition, conquered 315,000 square miles. Defeating the Aztecs, he seized central and southern Mexico and later subjugated Guatemala and Honduras to Spanish rule.

The Inter-Parliamentary Union, an international organisation that works to foster representative government and world peace, reports that women are appallingly under-represented in their national parliaments. Although women account for more than 50% of the world’s population, in 2004 the number of female legislators stood at only 15.6%. The figures below are for March 2004. (The IPU can be contacted at www.ipu.orgor by writing to 5, Chemin du Pommier/ Case postale 330/ CH-1218 Le Grand-Saconnex/ Geneva, Switzerland.)

THE 10 NATIONS WITH THE HIGHEST PERCENTAGE OF WOMEN IN THEIR LEGISLATURES…

1. Sweden 45.3%

2. Rwanda 45.0

3. Denmark 38.0

4. Finland 37.5

5. Norway 36.4

6. Cuba 36.0

7. Costa Rica 35.1

8. Netherlands 35.1

9. Belgium 33.9

10. Germany 31.4

…COMPARED TO 20 OTHERS

11. Argentina 30.7

12. Spain 30.5

13. Mozambique 30.0

14. New Zealand 28.3

15. Vietnam 27.3

16. Canada 23.6

17. Mexico 21.2

18. Pakistan 20.8

19. Nicaragua 20.7

20. China 20.2

21. United Kingdom 17.3

22. Israel 15.0

23. United States 14.0

24. Syria 12.0

25. France 11.7

26. India 9.3

27. Russia 8.0

28. South Korea 5.5

29. Kuwait 0.0

30. Saudi Arabia 0.0

Source: ‘Women in National Parliaments: World Classification’, Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Volcanic activity on the ‘bald mountain’ towering over St Pierre, Martinique, was usually so inconsequential that no one took seriously the fresh steaming ventholes and earth tremors during April 1902. By early May, however, ash began to rain down continuously, and the nauseating stench of sulphur filled the air. Their homes on the mountainside made uninhabitable, more than 100 fer-de-lance snakes slithered down and invaded the mulatto quarter of St Pierre. The 6-ft long serpents killed 50 people and innumerable animals before they were finally destroyed by the town’s giant street cats. But the annihilation had only begun. On May 5, a landslide of boiling mud spilled into the sea, followed by a tsunami that killed hundreds and, three days later, May 8, Mt Pelee finally exploded, sending a murderous avalanche of white-hot lava straight toward the town. Within three minutes St Pierre was completely obliterated. Of its 30,000 population, there were only two survivors.

Two thousand people, mostly black, jammed into the Shiloh Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 19, 1902, to hear an address by Booker T. Washington. The brick church was new. A steep flight of stairs, enclosed in brick, led from the entrance doors to the church proper. After Washington’s speech, there was an altercation over an unoccupied seat, and the word ‘fight’ was misunderstood as ‘fire’. The congregation rose as if on cue and stampeded for the stairs. Those who reached them first were pushed from behind and fell. Others fell on top of them until the entrance was completely blocked by a pile of screaming humanity 10 ft high. Efforts by Washington and the churchmen down in the front to induce calm were fruitless, and they stood by helplessly while their brothers and sisters, mostly the latter, were trampled or suffocated to death. There was neither fire — nor even a real fight — but 115 people died.

On January 15, 1919 the workers and residents of Boston’s North End, mostly Irish and Italian, were out enjoying the noontime sun of an unseasonably warm day. Suddenly, with only a low rumble of warning, the huge cast-iron tank of the Purity Distilling Company burst open and a great wave of raw black molasses, two storeys high, poured down Commercial Street and oozed into the adjacent waterfront area. Neither pedestrians nor horse-drawn wagons could outrun it. Two million gallons of molasses, originally destined for rum, engulfed scores of people — 21 men, women and children died of drowning or suffocation, while another 150 were injured. Buildings crumbled, and an elevated train track collapsed. Those horses not completely swallowed up were so trapped in the goo they had to be shot by the police. Sightseers who came to see the chaos couldn’t help but walk in the molasses. On their way home they spread the sticky substance throughout the city. Boston smelled of molasses for a week, and the harbour ran brown until summer.

A huge cylindrical gasometer — the largest in the world at that time — located in the heart of the industrial centre of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, developed a leak. On the morning of November 14, 1927 repairmen set out to look for it — with an open-flame blowlamp. At about 10 o’clock they apparently found the leak. The tank, containing 5 million cu. ft of natural gas, rose in the air like a balloon and exploded. Chunks of metal, some weighing more than 100 lb, were scattered great distances, and the combined effects of air pressure and fire left a square mile of devastation. Twenty-eight people were killed and hundreds were injured.

Every year the firemen of Gillingham, Kent, would construct a makeshift ‘house’ out of wood and canvas for the popular fire-fighting demonstration at the annual Gillingham Park fête. Every year, too, a few local boys were selected from many aspirants to take part in the charade. On July 11, 1929 nine boys — aged 10 to 14 — and six firemen costumed as if for a wedding party climbed to the third floor of the ‘house’. The plan was to light a smoke fire on the first floor, rescue the ‘wedding party’ with ropes and ladders, and then set the empty house ablaze to demonstrate the use of the fire hoses. By some error, the real fire was lit first. The spectators, assuming the bodies they saw burning were dummies, cheered and clapped, while the firemen outside directed streams of water on what they knew to be a real catastrophe. All 15 people inside the house died.

On Saturday morning, July 28, 1945, a veteran Army pilot took off in a B-25 light bomber from Bedford, Massachusetts, headed for Newark, New Jersey, the co-pilot and a young sailor hitching a ride were also aboard. Fog made visibility poor. About an hour later, people on the streets of midtown Manhattan became aware of the rapidly increasing roar of a plane and watched with horror as a bomber suddenly appeared out of the clouds, dodged between skyscrapers, and then plunged into the side of the Empire State Building. Pieces of plane and building fell like hail. A gaping hole was gouged in the 78th floor, one of the plane’s two engines hurtled through seven walls and came out the opposite side of the building, and the other engine shot through an elevator shaft, severing the cables and sending the car plummeting to the basement. When the plane’s fuel tank exploded, six floors were engulfed in flame, and burning gasoline streamed down the sides of the building. Fortunately, few offices were open on a Saturday and only 11 people — plus the three occupants of the plane — died.

On April 15, 1947 the French freighter Grandcamp docked at Texas City, Texas, and took on some 1,400 tons of ammonium nitrate fertiliser. That night a fire broke out in the hold of the ship. By dawn, thick black smoke had port authorities worried because the Monsanto chemical plant was only 700 ft away. As men stood on the dock watching, tugboats prepared to tow the freighter out to sea. Suddenly a ball of fire enveloped the ship. For many it was the last thing they ever saw. A great wall of flame radiated outward from the wreckage, and within minutes the Monsanto plant exploded, killing and maiming hundreds of workers and any spectators who had survived the initial blast. Most of the business district was devastated, and fires raged along the waterfront, where huge tanks of butane gas stood imperilled. Shortly after midnight, a second freighter — also carrying nitrates — exploded, and the whole sequence began again. More than 500 people died, and another 1,000 were badly injured.