Eyob Getachew's Key Ideas from Bad Days in History
by Michael Farquhar

Et tu, Brute? The Ides of March became infamous as Caesar was stabbed by his own Senate allies. Ambition + betrayal = a very bad day.

Captured and tried for heresy, the young French heroine was executed by her enemies. Decades later, she was declared a saint.

The infamous Donner Party, stranded in snow, turned to cannibalism. On this day, the last known victim, George Donner, perished in the mountains.

The first successful nuclear bomb test in New Mexico introduced the world to a new kind of destruction. Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita: “Now I am become Death.”

Caught in the Watergate scandal, Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign. He left office in disgrace—but narrowly escaped prosecution.

A bakery spark led to a days-long inferno that destroyed 80% of London. The silver lining? It wiped out the rats spreading the plague.

Due to a miscommunication, British cavalry charged directly into Russian cannons. It was brave. It was poetic. It was a disaster.

Explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his men perished in the freezing wastelands of Antarctica—just after discovering they’d lost the race to the South Pole.

Freezing, starving, and decimated by disease and guerrilla attacks, Napoleon's Grand Army limped out of Russia. Of 600,000 men, fewer than 100,000 returned.

Bad Days in History reminds us: history is not just glory and progress—it's often cruel, ironic, and absurd. These stories deliver perspective with a punch of dark humor.