Excerpt from Great Disasters and Horrors in the World's History Whatever be the ideas of the public upon a glance at the title page of this work, it is not intended to pander to the morbid desire for the sensational or horrible, characteristic of weak minds. This volume is not a literary morgue. Mankind is constantly astonished by reports of mishaps and disasters of manifold character, when there is seldom room for astonishment A large proportion of the calamities reported from day to day are directly due to the haste, greed, and heedlessness of man himself, and need no comment But there is a large class of disasters, due solely to meteorological or geological conditions, which surpass all others in magnitude and appalling destruction. In such cases men insist on prating about "mysterious visitations," as though these occurrences were subject to the dominion of no law. To an examination of such is this book devoted. When in school, the writer was often struck by the persistence with which even the most diligent students would call upon the teachers of physics and chemistry to suspend the recitation and devote the time to illustrative experiments. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.