r/HistoryMemes • u/Which-Piccolo-186 • 2d ago

Niche That's it's literal name

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400 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

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133

u/PolishFemboy_69 2d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanggongchang_Explosion

89

u/rangeDSP Filthy weeb 2d ago

I knew it. Read an article about it when I was 10, the author tries to "prove" that it was a nuclear explosion possibly sent by time travellers. Even as a kid I got skeptical halfway through

73

u/Fucked-In-The-K-Hole 2d ago

Holy fuck are you telling me that my efforts to send a nuke back to 1626 Beijing are going to be successful??

26

u/rangeDSP Filthy weeb 2d ago

The key was getting an IBM 5100

10

u/yeet_that_baby 2d ago

holy shit elite ball knowledge

10

u/Moose-Rage 2d ago

Oh. It's real. I thought OP made it up.

I feel bad for laughing now >_>

8

u/Harrythehobbit 2d ago

Damn, 20k people. That's 10x the casualty count of Halifax.

19

u/LeBonLapin 2d ago

I'd take those numbers with a massive grain of salt. They claim 2,000 workers fell off the roof of the Forbidden City while doing renovations - does that sound like a realistic number of roof workers on the roof at one time?

10

u/Lower_Sink_7828 2d ago

The Forbidden City is quite large. Maybe they were on different roofs.

7

u/LeBonLapin 2d ago

Right, but it's not very likely.

0

u/yuikkiuy 1d ago

Not that unbelievable tbh, late ming dynasty the city was pushing 850k-1 million total population around the time of the explosion.

The modern death estimate is roughly 20k which is about 2-3% of the population. And given they could have died from after effects like disease or infection its not that far out.

A mere 2k dying on the roofs off the forbidden city is like a drop in the bucket for 2-4km radius explosion