Plentiful Throughout History

Indeed, bad news has been plentiful throughout the centuries, outweighing any good news.  In the annals of history, the scales are heavily tipped toward human suffering, disappointment,  and despair, which have been mankind's lot.

Let us consider just a few examples.  The book Chronicles of the World, devised by Jacques Legrand, sets out a collection of stories, each written for the particular date on which the event happened but as if it were being told by a modern journalist reporting the event.  From these well-search reports, we get a bird's eye view of the widespread bad news that man has heard throughout his troubled existence here on planet Earth.

First, consider this early report from Greece in 429  B.C.E. It is covering the war then being waged between Athens and Sparta:  "The city-state of Potidaea has been forced to surrender to the besieging Athenians after being reduced to such a state of hunger that its people have been eating the bodies of their dead."  Bad news indeed!

Moving on to the first century before out Common Era, we find a graphic report of the death of Julius Caesar, datelined Rome, March 15, 44 B.C. "Julius Caesar has been assassinated.  He was stabbed to death by a group of conspirators, some of them his closest friends, as he took his seat int he Senate House today, the Ides of March."

 During the centuries that followed, bad news continued to abound.  One shocking example is this news from Mexico in 1487:  "In the most spectacular sacrificial display ever seen in the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan, 20.000 people lost their hearts to Huitzilopochtli, the war god."

Not only has man's cruelty provided bad news but his carelessness has added to the long list.  The great fire of London seems to have been one such disaster.  The report from London, England, dated September 5, 1666, reads:  "At last,m after four days and nights, the fire of London has been halted by the duke of York, who brought in naval gunpowder teams to blow up buildings in the path of flames.   Some 400 acres have been razed  with 87 churches and over 13,000 houses destroyed.  Miraculously, only nine lives were lost."

We must add to these examples of bad the news the epidemics that have raged through many continents-for example, the cholera epidemic of the early 1830's . The printed heading reporting this reads:  "The spectre of cholera haunts Europe."  The realistic report that follows  depicts  bad news at its frightening worst:  "Cholera,unknown in Europe until 1817, is spreading westwards from Asia.  Already Russian cities such as Moscow and St.Petersburg have had their populations decimated-the majority of the victims from the urban poor."

Next time: Escalation in Recent Years

The Watchtower, 1996