Brace yourself for a chilling countdown of yuletide tragedies. We're unwrapping the most devastating events that have ever occurred during the festive season. From natural disasters to man-made horrors, these incidents shook the world and left an indelible mark on history. Join us as we explore the darker side of Christmas.
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00:00Merry Christmas, Phil. Merry Christmas.
00:03Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the most bloody or horrific disasters occurring on or near Christmas.
00:13You sort of imagine a disaster like this to be in appalling weather and driving rain and howling gales and it was just the most perfectly tranquil day.
00:24The USSR invades Afghanistan.
00:28At the time, no one knew, but they were sure of one thing.
00:32The situation in the Afghan provinces was becoming extremely serious,
00:36especially close to the Pakistan border where a large number of anti-communist combatants had taken refuge.
00:42Christmas Eve 1979 marked the beginning of one of the longest and bloodiest boondoggles in Russian history.
00:49That day, the Soviet Union launched its invasion of Afghanistan.
00:54What began as a covert operation to prop up a faltering communist government quickly spiraled into a decade-long quagmire.
01:01Years of death, displacement and despair would follow.
01:05They said they'd been invited in to repel foreign intervention after a coup.
01:10In truth, President Hafizullah Amin was killed in his Darul Aman Palace, not by Afghans, but by Soviet special forces, the Spetsnaz.
01:20The invasion was brutal, marked by scorched earth tactics, indiscriminate bombings and the use of landmines that still haunt Afghan soil.
01:29It devastated Afghan society, creating millions of refugees.
01:33It also sparked one of the Cold War's fiercest proxy battles.
01:37As the U.S. armed Mujahideen fighters, hundreds of thousands of Afghan civilians would be killed in the conflict.
01:45The Soviet army, as bad as it performed in a lot of cases in Afghanistan in the 80s, did a lot better than the Russians are doing in Ukraine.
01:54Congo Christmas Massacre.
01:56We've just arrived at Bikande village, which is one of the sites of recent attacks.
02:01And the first thing you see when you come into the village are the graves where people have been trying to bury their loved ones.
02:07The Democratic Republic of Congo is no stranger to tragedies.
02:12And the year 2008 ended with a horrific one.
02:15After weeks of unrest and violence, Christmas of 2008 provided few tidings of comfort and joy.
02:22The Lord's Resistance Army, a terrorist Christian cult, unleashed a devastating and murderous rampage.
02:29As the holiday began on Christmas Eve, the LRA attacked villages across the Ovali province.
02:35More than 600 people were slaughtered in ways too brutal to describe here.
02:39They also abducted dozens of people, including children, committed acts of sexual violence against women and raised whole villages to the ground.
02:48This massacre was part of the LRA's long campaign of terror, leaving scars that persist today.
02:56Some were killed here. How many? How many were killed here?
03:01Five.
03:02And then they stopped here and killed another five men.
03:05Erzincan Earthquake
03:07Uncertainty reigned everywhere during Christmas of 1939 as the world braced for the storms of war.
03:14In the midst of this, Turkey faced a natural disaster.
03:18An earthquake struck the Erzincan region on December 27th with devastating force, 7.8 magnitude on the Richter scale.
03:27Entire villages were leveled, leaving over 32,000 dead.
03:31Countless more were injured or left homeless in the frigid winter.
03:35Amid the cheer of bells and carols in other corners of the globe, Erzincan's silence was deafening.
03:42It was broken only by the cries of survivors and the creak of collapsing timber.
03:47This was a Christmas season not marked by joy, but by resilience in the face of ruin.
03:53The Italian Hall Disaster
03:55Someone yelled fire and there were, I think, one very narrow entrance to the second floor.
04:01It resulted in a stampede to get out.
04:04Shouting fire in a crowded theater is a classic cautionary tale cited by law schools everywhere as an exception to the First Amendment.
04:14But for attendees at the 1913 Christmas Eve party at the Italian Hall, it wasn't just a metaphor.
04:20It was a deadly reality.
04:22Striking copper miners and their families gathered for a holiday party that night in Calumet, Michigan.
04:28They sought a brief respite from their grueling fight against exploitative mine management.
04:34The hall was packed with joy and solidarity until an unidentified figure yelled fire in the crowded room.
04:40Chaos erupted.
04:42There was no fire, but the rush to escape turned tragic as 73 people, most of them children, were crushed in the narrow staircase.
04:51In 1913, no one said the doors opened the wrong way.
04:54If it had been the case, it would have been in the news, it would have been in the reports, but it wasn't.
04:58The Tongawai Train Disaster
05:00Hey, hey, stop! Stop! Stop the train!
05:07Christmas Eve 1953 should have been a day of peace for New Zealanders, but nature had other plans.
05:14Mount Ruapehu's volcanic crater silently burst, spilling a deadly mixture of mud, water, and volcanic debris down its slopes.
05:23The raging torrent overwhelmed the nearby dam, holding back the crater lake.
05:28It proceeded downwards, weakening the rail bridge at Tongawai.
05:32On Christmas Eve, an express train packed with holiday travellers barrelled unknowingly toward disaster.
05:46The engineer saw the damage, but it was too late.
05:49He braked, saving the back half of the train as the front plunged into the Whangahu River below.
05:56Of the 285 passengers, 151 perished in the icy waters, making it New Zealand's worst rail tragedy.
06:05I couldn't believe what I saw, actually, a lighted carriage on its side, floating down the, well, floating down its side with the lights on, and the river, and then it suddenly went out.
06:18The Library of Congress burns.
06:21Its elaborately decorated interior, embellished by works of art from nearly 50 American painters and sculptors,
06:29linked the United States to classical traditions of learning and simultaneously flexed American cultural and technological muscle.
06:37The Library of Congress has a history of fiery heartbreak.
06:41Its first collection ended in flaming ruin in 1814, when British troops torched the capital during the War of 1812.
06:50Congress rebuilt the nation's library the next year, purchasing over 6,000 volumes from Thomas Jefferson's personal collection.
06:58Congress accepted and paid nearly $24,000 for 6,487 books, which more than doubled the size of the original collection.
07:08But on Christmas Eve 1851, disaster struck again.
07:12A broken chimney flue sparked the conflagration in the library's main room.
07:17Nearly two-thirds of the book collection, including much of Jefferson's priceless donation, was destroyed.
07:23All told, the fire devoured 35,000 books, manuscripts, and maps, turning what should have been a season of cheer into one of cultural loss.
07:34This may be the coolest building I've ever been in.
07:37Christmas Flood.
07:39A city which at its lowest lies six meters below sea level has for centuries had to work out how to keep the people dry.
07:46If you didn't know how they do it nowadays, you wouldn't even notice.
07:49Hollanders were treated to anything but a Merry Christmas during the winter of 1717.
07:55As families gathered to celebrate, a devastating storm surge from the North Sea swept across the country, breaching dikes and inundating low-lying regions.
08:05Known as the Christmas Flood, it was one of the deadliest disasters in Dutch history and also affected Germany and Scandinavia.
08:13The icy waters claimed around 14,000 lives, leaving entire communities submerged and countless homes destroyed.
08:21Villages disappeared, livestock drowned, and survivors faced a frozen wasteland where holiday cheer was replaced by mourning.
08:30The next time I say, let's evacuate, let's evacuate, whatever you say, honey.
08:38The Dutch, long masters of water management, were humbled by nature's ferocity.
08:43The tragedy underscored the peril of living below sea level and sparked renewed efforts to fortify their defenses.
08:51The Netherlands was forced to address its geographic weakness in 1953 when a huge storm pushed the North Sea inland.
08:58Nearly 2,000 people died.
09:00Ku Klux Klan founded.
09:02We aim to pull evil up by the roof before it chokes out the flower of our culture and heritage.
09:12The holiday season of 1865 was bittersweet.
09:16The Civil War had ended, slavery was abolished, and a nation began to heal.
09:21But it was also a time of profound uncertainty.
09:24Abraham Lincoln was gone, Reconstruction's uncertain future loomed, and not everyone embraced the promise of equality.
09:32On Christmas Eve in Pulaski, Tennessee, a small group of Confederate veterans met.
09:37Cloaking their revanchist ambitions in sinister secrecy, they founded the Ku Klux Klan.
09:43Its name was inspired by the Greek word for circle.
09:47Nathan Bedford Forrest was the Klan's first imperial wizard, and the hoods and robes were used to frighten Black people in their homes.
09:55What began as a fraternity quickly became a terror organization.
09:59The KKK wielded violence and intimidation to uphold white supremacy and undermine the fragile progress of Reconstruction.
10:07Instead of goodwill and peace, these men sowed fear and hatred, casting a dark shadow over the country in the decades to come.
10:16Indian Ocean Tsunami.
10:17As a journalist, I kind of like I'm losing sense of reporting something because I don't know where to start.
10:24Everywhere is flat.
10:26Boxing Day, December 26th, 2004, began with joy but ended in unimaginable tragedy as the Indian Ocean unleashed one of history's deadliest natural disasters.
10:38A massive earthquake off the coast of Sumatra triggered a tsunami that swept across more than a dozen countries, from Indonesia to East Africa.
10:47Entire villages were swallowed by walls of water, leaving devastation in their wake.
10:56Almost 230,000 lives were lost.
11:05Families were instantly torn apart, communities erased in moments.
11:10Beaches, once filled with holiday revelers, transformed into scenes of chaos and unimaginable destruction.
11:16The tsunami struck with little warning, its ferocity unmatched, turning a season of peace into one of worldwide mourning.
11:25These are some of the 140,000 homes built by the international community since the tsunami.
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11:47Black Christmas
11:50They were old propaganda pictures from the neighboring American POW camp, for which the prisoners were forced to stage happy-looking occasions.
11:59December 7th, 1941 will forever be remembered for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
12:06But a day later, Japanese forces also launched their assault on the British colony of Hong Kong.
12:11Outnumbered more than two to one, Allied forces held their ground for 17 brutal days.
12:17But on Christmas Day, with defenses shattered and supplies exhausted, Hong Kong fell.
12:23At 3 p.m., the British commanders officially surrendered to the forces of Imperial Japan.
12:30The Union Jack was lowered.
12:35For the survivors, surrender marked the beginning of a nightmare.
12:39Japanese troops unleashed a wave of atrocities.
12:43Executions of POWs, sexual violence against countless women, and mass looting spread throughout the city.
12:50Outlying villages were decimated.
12:52Civilians were starved to death or murdered outright.
12:56Afterwards, the end of the Battle of Hong Kong would come to be known as Black Christmas.
13:02Many expected to be treated civilly, according to the rules of the Geneva Convention.
13:07They were sadly mistaken.
13:10Over the next three and a half years of captivity, many of the living would come to envy the dead.
13:16Do you know of other horrors unleashed onto the world during the most wonderful time of the year?
13:21Let us know in the comments.
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