False: 10 of the 15 deadliest days in American history occurred in the past two weeks
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This table, in various forms, is widely shared on social media. Can you spot the errors? Most are surprisingly incapable of noticing the problems here.
It leaves out the Spanish Flu pandemic. A staggering 195,000 people died just in October of 1918 which is an average of almost 6,300 per day.
It leaves out June 6, 1944 when 4,144 Americans died on a beach in France.
It lies about Gettysburg – 7,863 troops died. The 3,155 is only counting the Union troops. In fact, many battles in the US Civil War killed thousands of soldiers in each battle. In fact, 5 other battles each killed more than 3,155.
The Galveston hurricane killed 6,000 to 12,000 with 8,000 being the commonly used estimate.
About 8,000 people die every day in the U.S., on average. I suspect there are other dark days in U.S. history as well but its not worth looking them up – the point is, this table is flawed through censorship and cherry picking.
I suspect there were some high death days during the 1968 flu pandemic – which I lived through. But incredibly, there was little to no news coverage, no daily reports of new cases and deaths, no closed schools or businesses, no face masks.
Keyword Indexing:
Of the 15 deadliest days in American history, 10 of them have happened within the last two weeks.