Natural disasters
Five real newspaper headlines about natural disasters, printed between 1900 and 2023, with their dates removed. Read each one and guess the year it was published. No multiple choice and no trivia questions, just the headline as it was printed.
There are 3 rounds of five in this topic, and a new one appears whenever the archive has enough for it.
Headline one
The New York Times
1900
A powerful hurricane struck Galveston, Texas on September 8, 1900 with a storm surge of up to 15 feet, killing between 6,000 and 12,000 people in what remains the deadliest natural disaster in American history. The prosperous island city was largely destroyed. The disaster prompted the construction of a massive sea wall and the elevation of the city's grade.
Headline two
Corriere della Sera
1963
On 9 October 1963, a massive landslide above the Vajont reservoir in the Italian Dolomites sent 260 million cubic metres of rock into the reservoir at high speed, generating a wave up to 250 metres high that overtopped the dam and inundated several villages below. Nearly 2,000 people were killed in the towns of Longarone and surrounding communities. The dam itself did not fail but the disaster was attributed to geological warnings that had been ignored by the engineers and authorities.
Headline three
The Seattle Times
1980
On 18 May 1980, Mount St. Helens in Washington State erupted in the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in modern US history. The eruption killed 57 people, flattened 230 square miles of forest, and sent a plume of ash 15 miles into the sky that drifted across the entire continental United States. The blast was so powerful that the mountain lost over 1,300 feet of elevation in an instant.
Headline four
The Times
2004
A massive undersea earthquake off the coast of Sumatra on 26 December 2004, measuring 9.1 on the Richter scale, triggered a series of devastating tsunamis across the Indian Ocean. Waves reaching heights of 30 metres killed an estimated 230,000 people in fourteen countries, with Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand suffering the greatest losses. It was the third-largest earthquake ever recorded and prompted the largest international aid response in history.
Headline five
Honolulu Star-Advertiser
2023
In August 2023, fast-moving wildfires driven by strong winds swept through Lahaina on the Hawaiian island of Maui, killing at least 100 people and destroying much of the historic town. It was the deadliest US wildfire disaster in over a century, leaving thousands homeless and much of Lahaina's waterfront in ruins.
Answer the five above to see your score.
Scoring works as it does in the daily game. Each headline is worth up to 100 points, and you lose two points for every year you are out. Being a decade wrong still earns you 80. A perfect round is 500.
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