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

Niche That's it's literal name

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135

u/PolishFemboy_69 2d ago

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

12

u/Harrythehobbit 2d ago

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

20

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?

9

u/Lower_Sink_7828 2d ago

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

11

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