2021年4月1日

Although spring is supposed to be full of life, March and April are particularly gloomy in history. We learned that some years ago, there was the missing of a Malaysia Airlines craft and also the damage made by the earthquake and the tsunami in Japan. Both sadly, happened in March, not to mention World Health Organization announced that COVID-19 had become a pandemic in March 2020.  

 

April is no party either. In April 1912, the British passenger liner RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg. Only 710 of 2,227 passengers and crew on board survived. In 1969, North Korea shot down a United States Navy aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board. In 1970, during the Cambodian Civil War, a massacre of the Vietnamese minority resulted in 800 bodies flowing down the Mekong River into South Vietnam. In 1989, a human crush occurred at Hillsborough Stadium, home of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, in the FA Cup Semi-final, resulting in the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans. On that same day, Hu Yaobang, a former General Secretary of the Chinese Government died, leading to the various Tiananmen Square episodes.

 

More sad incidents in the April months in this century: in 2013, two bombs exploded near the finish line at the Boston Marathon, Massachusetts, killing three people and injuring 264 others.  On the same day, a wave of bombings across Iraq killed at least 75 people.  In the following year, in the worst massacre of the South Sudanese Civil War, at least 200 civilians were gunned down after seeking refuge in houses of worship as well as hospitals. In April 2019, The Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris in France was seriously damaged by a large fire.

 

Everything sad above happened on 15 April.

 

 

Anson Yang