The year 1899 is considered the worst for Major League Baseball. That season, the Cleveland Spiders played 154 games, winning 20 and losing 134.
2008 was the worst year in National Football League history. The Detroit Lions was the first team to lose every game in a 16-game season.
In 1917, the US experienced the worst inflation in its history, when annual inflation reached 17.84%.
From 1939–1945, the world was involved in the worst, most lethal war in history. When World War II ended it is estimated that as many as 80 million people had died—including 21 to 25 million military deaths.
For more than a year, much of the world experienced literal darkness—day and night, extreme cold, economic stagnation, and plague. Known as the Late Antique Little Ice Age, the year was AD 536. A mysterious fog had covered much of the Northern Hemisphere blocking the sun, causing temperatures to drop, destroying crops, and killing people. Why? What was the cause of this fog?
In 2018, researchers discovered that the fog was created by a volcanic event. A report in the journal Antiquity concluded that there was a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland (Other sources are not as convinced it was Iceland, but certainly somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere.) Volcanic ash, sulphur, and debris were propelled high into the atmosphere and then carried by the wind across most of the Northern Hemisphere; spreading ash thousands of miles, coating Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. This eruption was big enough that it altered the global climate patterns of the time. Procopius, the Byzantine historian, described the darkness as, “the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during this whole year.” He said the sun seemed to be in constant eclipse.
His and other accounts of the darkness weren’t taken seriously until the 1990s, when researchers decided to look at the trees in Ireland. Examining the tree rings, they discovered that something weird happened around AD 536. The summer temperatures in Europe and Asia were 35°F–37°F colder; the coldest temperatures in the previous 2,300 years. It even snowed that summer in China. “In the first year of the Tai dynasty [536], snow fell in the summer, and the crops failed.” Nan Shi, Chinese Chronicle. Michael McCormick, a Harvard history professor, noted that, “It was a pretty drastic change; it happened overnight. The ancient witnesses really were onto something. They were not being hysterical or imagining the end of the world. It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year.”
Roman politician Cassiodorus wrote, “We marvel to see no shadows of our bodies at noon.” And described the sun as being “bluish” in color. The moon had lost its luster and, “the seasons seem to be all jumbled up together.” “We have had a winter without storms, a spring without mildness, and a summer without heat.” The effects of this Little Ice Age were made worse by two other massive eruptions in 540 and 547, preventing western Europe from recovering until 660 and 680 in Central Asia.
Then, as if darkness, drought, and economic calamity weren’t bad enough, in 541 the bubonic plague hit the Roman port of Pelusium in Egypt, rapidly spreading until it had killed one-third to one-half of the Eastern Roman Empire.
Less heat and fewer of the sun’s rays were reaching the Earth. After the eruption in 540, temperatures continued to drop and photosynthesis slowed, people died, insects and animals could not survive.
Unable to feed their armies, empires began to collapse, leaving them unable to protect themselves from marauding neighbors. It took decades for the European and Asian continents to recover.
Whether the volcanic eruption in 536 had any real affects on the Americas is harder to tell. There is some evidence that there was a global drop in temperatures in these societies, and excavations have found skeletal remains from 6th century Mesoamerica that indicate malnutrition in the remains of children and young people, and this would align with drought and famine.
A chain of events that began with a volcanic eruption, and ended after decades of chaos—snow in the summer, darkness, seasons scrambled, the deaths of millions of people. Is it any wonder why people of the time thought it was the end of the world?
Caveat: I was intrigued by this subject, but I am in no way making a position statement either for myself nor the Steps to Life Ministry on climate change as it is viewed today.
Did You Know?
The plague of 541 was known as the Plague of Justinian because he was the ruler of the Byzantine Empire at the time. Some estimates suggest that 10% of the world’s population died during this time of plague.
Did You Know?
A team of researchers matched ice records of chemical traces found in ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica with the tree ring records of climate, and found that nearly every unusually cold summer over the last 2,500 years was preceded by a volcanic eruption.
Sources: clrn.org/what-is-the-worst-record-in-nfl-history; Wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worst_Major_League_Baseball_season_win-loss_records; madisontrust.com/information-center/visualizations/when-in-us-history-were-the-highest-and-lowest-inflation-rates; nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/5-worst-wars-all-human-history-170840; history.com/article/536-volcanic-eruption-fog-eclipse-worst-year; science.org/content/article/why-536-was-worst-year-be-alive; justhistoryposts.com/2026/06/10/a-brief-moment-of-historys-worst-year-ever