[Editor’s Note: We are re-sharing this post as it seems to be getting some attention today in light of the passing of Prince.]
Does April Go Hand in Hand With Tragedy?
Over the weekend, the thought crossed my mind, well, it’s almost mid-April, time for a tragedy to happen. And I’m not a pessimist by nature. It’s just started to feel the last few years like mid-April is circled on the calendar with “Tragedy!” written across it in big red letters. But surely it’s not really that way–it just feels like it. Right?
The Definition of Tragedy
That means it’s time to count. To compare how April events stack up next to the rest of the year. The hard part is criteria. History is vast. For my sanity, with some other GeekMoms’ help, I narrowed it down to this. Events must:
- Have happened between the 15th and the 20th of the month.
- Caused fatalities.
- Be in the US.
We made an exception for “in the US” on the Titanic but counted only American deaths. (Not entirely consistent, but compromise.) I also excluded war deaths, which is largely excluded by the “in the US” part, but this notably cuts out the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest one-day battle in US history, killing 23,000 on September 17. In fact, these criteria exclude quite a few notable historic events in those date ranges, including:
- My Lai massacre
- Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art heist
- Hillsborough Stadium disaster
- Battle of Culloden
- Good Friday Massacre, which, despite its name, involved no deaths
- Black Monday
- The return of Apollo 13
And of course, I almost certainly missed some things that are similar to others here, but I think it’s safe to assume I would miss them equally across the calendar, so we’ll call it a wash. (This is hardly deep scientific inquiry.)
The Hard Facts on Tragedy in April, According To Our Criteria
Here’s a comparison of that date range in each month with the number of fatal, tragic events in blue and the number of deaths in red:
As it turns out… April does stand out a bit. I also learned I’m not sure I want to travel on July 17 again (see table below). That leaves the question of why.
There is at least one April event due to connection–the Oklahoma City bombing was in part a reaction to what happened at Waco two years earlier.
The August events are clearly seasonal, weather-related. But other than that, there’s not a lot of pattern here, which makes it that much more interesting. Of course, the proximity of anniversaries on the calendar is not really a sign of anything, and I truly expected my counting to show more evenness across the year.
I’m not at all suggesting there are deep, mystical forces at work or some connection like a blue box always showing up for Christmas in London. It’s just interesting to see.
For reference, here’s the list of events I used:
| Date | Event | Deaths |
| January 15 | Boston Molasses Flood | 15 |
| January 16 | TWA flight 3 crash | 22 |
| January 17 | Cleveland Elementary (Stockton) massacre | 6 |
| January 17 | Northridge earthquake | 57 |
| January 18 | United flight 266 | 38 |
| Total | Â 138 | |
| Date | Event | Deaths |
| February 20 | Great White nightclub fire | 100 |
| Total | 100 | |
| Date | Event | Deaths |
| March 18 | Tri-State Tornado, (deadliest in US history) | 747 |
| Total | 747 | |
| Date | Event | Deaths |
| April 15 | Abraham Lincoln died | 1 |
| April 15 | Titanic sank | 119 |
| April 15 | Great Mississippi Flood (1927, worst flood in US history) | 250 |
| April 15 | Boston Marathon bombing | 3 |
| April 16 | Virginia Tech shooting | 32 |
| April 18 | 1906 earthquake in San Francisco | 3,425 |
| April 19 | End of the Branch Davidian siege | 86 |
| April 19 | Oklahoma City bombing | 168 |
| April 20 | Columbine school shooting | 15 |
| April 20 | Deepwater Horizon explosion | 11 |
| Total | Â 4,110 | |
| Date | Event | Deaths |
| May 15 | Cleveland Clinic fire | 123 |
| May 18 | Mount St. Helens 1980 eruption | 57 |
| Total | Â 180 | |
| Date | Event | Deaths |
| June 15 | General Slocum fire | 1,021 |
| June 17 | Union Station Massacre | 60 |
| Total | 1,081 | |
| Date | Event | Deaths |
| July 17 | Great Train Wreck of 1856 | 60 |
| July 17 | USMC R4Q NROTC crash | 43 |
| July 17 | Kansas City Hyatt walkway collapse | 114 |
| July 17 | TWA flight 800 | 230 |
| July 18 | Chappaquiddick | 1 |
| July 18 | San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre | 21 |
| July 20 | Aurora, CO movie theater shooting | 12 |
| Total | Â 481 | |
| Date | Event | Deaths |
| August 17 | Hurricane Camille | 248 |
| August 17 | Yellowstone earthquake | 28 |
| August 18 | Hurricane Alicia | 22 |
| August 19 | Salem witch trials | 5 |
| August 19 | Hurricane Diane | 184 |
| Total | Â 487 | |
| Date | Event | Deaths |
| September 16 | 1920 Wall Street bombing | 38 |
| September 18 | Okeechobee hurricane | ~2,500 |
| Total | Â ~2,538 | |
| Date | Event | Deaths |
| October 15 | Staten Island Ferry crash | 11 |
| October 17 | Loma Prieta earthquake | 63 |
| October 20 | Oakland Hills firestorm | 25 |
| Total | Â 99 | |
| Date | Event | Deaths |
| November 18 | Aggie bonfire collapse | 12 |
| Total | Â 12 | |
| Date | Event | Deaths |
| December 15 | Silver Bridge collapse | 46 |
| Total | Â 46 | |
Chappaquiddick? Seriously?
I included that from the perspective of “what if this happened in the Twitter age?” It may seem about a million times lower on the tragedy scale than most of these, but it’s still a notable (enough to still remembered by that one word by people who weren’t even alive yet!) event in which someone died, thus meeting the criteria.
This is fascinating. Chilling, but fascinating.
the return of apollo 13 wasn’t a tragedy that was a triumph.
And you forgot Apollo 1 , Challenger and Columbia that happened between the end of jan and first of feb. Other than that it’s tax day , that does it heh.
Apollo 13 is listed as being an event that’s during the dates but doesn’t qualify otherwise–there were no fatalities. And the others didn’t occur between the 15-20th of the month.
choosing just those dates does not prove that april is more tragedy in it , just proves that there were a lot for that week , you could say that the 15th april has more tragedy than the 15th of other months but not the entire month when you don’t take data for the entire month every month. That’s a lot of missing data trying to prove that april has more tragedy.
I did say more specifically “mid-April,” but really, we’re not trying to prove anything. Because even the hypothesis that mid-April somehow suffers more death that the middle of any other month is meaningless–there’s not going to be a cause–it doesn’t really matter. Like I said, it’s just interesting that the notion seemed to hold out. It actually started when on a whim I googled something like “do bad things happen in April.” It turns out to be an oddly common observation, and you’ll see you don’t get the same pages of results for “do bad things happen in [any other month].”
911?
The events compared are between the 15-20th of each month. 11 is not between 15 and 20.
Which is why I had to check myself before coming in with “Katrina?” in the month of August. I almost missed that 15th – 20th qualifier.
My kids were born on the 14th (but it was the 15th in most of the world by then!) and 19th of April… does that count as tragic? đ
I myself tend to go through a depressive emotional downturn at this time of year. Maybe there’s something in the weather that messes people up and therefore leads to more violence/dangerous negligence/carelessness/tendency-to-wander-into-natural-disasters?
Only featuring events between the 15th and 20th of each month seems a bizarre requirement that only magnifies confirmation bias.
Statistically, it would be even more weird if events were evenly distributed. Your sammple size isn’t nearly large enough to expect even distribution. Sorry to be a buzzkill. I recommend a cool book called “Innumerancy” to get a quick and easy statistics lesson.
Perhaps you (and several other commenters) failed to read parts like “This is hardly deep scientific inquiry” and “not a sign of anything” and futher notes that this is merely interesting observation and not a deep study or meaningful at all. Just something interesting, like when somebody notices that . So yeah, you kind of are being a buzzkill. Because this is fun. Not work.
it is a interesting observation because i thought about this too. I find it interesting how tragedy happens during this time of the year. Specifically the middle part of April. Great job!
I found this article to be very inyeresting !! It does make me wonder if some lunar moons are a part of these occurrences? It seems like there should be pattterns to watch for? Windows or doorways from the universe that could benefit our decision making?
Tsk tsk tsk: You forgot about the Boston Marathon Bombing that happened on the 15th, you posted this two days later, shame on you. Better include the Armenian Genocide as well as some international events to further prove your point.
Missed one: April 17th 2013. West, Tx fertilizer plant explosion. 14 deaths.
I realized this because my birthday is the 21st of April. I have heard that things happen around April 20th because that day is Hitler’s birthday. I do not know if this is a coincidence or not, but that is something to think about.
My brother asked me if I noticed that April seemed to have alot more tragedy than other months. I had not given any thought to it up until now. Great post. Very interesting!
I concur with your April tradegy theory and apparently the numbers don’t lie. I also believe that you missed Hitlers antics and war crimes in WWII. I would like to do further research. There have seemed to be several events this year that follow suit I.e Korean ship sinking, Malaysian flight cover up, Boston Marathon bombing last year and several heinous murders & crimes! A possible crazy theory of mine is that the evil and demonic forces & principalities are working overtime to denounce our faith in Christ with the Easter holiday coming soon.
Please continue your research.
Thank you Merci. Grazi Danke Arrigato Gracias Spasibo.
You forgot September 11.
In addition to the crashes of TWA 800 and USMC R4Q:
TAM Airlines Flight 3054 crashed and exploded in Sao Paulo on July 17, 2007, killing all 187 on board and 12 people on the ground.
Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down with an SA-11 surface to air missile on July 17 2014, killing all 298 on board.
So yeah. Wow. Im officially never. Going. Anywhere. Near. An airplane or an airport on July 17th. Ever!
The list has the death toll from the Titanic sinking as 119 when more that 1500 perished in reality.
I googled “why do bad things happen in April” and found this article. I have noticed for the past few years that a lot of tragedies seem to occur around the 19th thru 23rd of the month. Glad I’m not alone.
Also Chernobyl disaster on April 26, 1986
A much forgotten but deeply tragic event took place on March 18th, 1937. New London TX school explosion. 295+ fatalities(mostly children). Deadliest school disaster in American history.
Ha ha. My birthday is April 15th so I quickly realized how many awful things happened on that day. I always post about it on Facebook.
To recap the dark, dark history of April 15th…
* Beloved President Abraham Lincoln died after being shot at Fordâs Theater by John Wilkes Booth.
* The RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic taking over 1,500 souls with it to the bottom of the ocean.
* Tax Day in the United States
* Boston Marathon Bombing
* Palm Sunday Massacre
* McDonaldâs became a corporation.
* The MV Sewol sank in South Korea (aka âSouth Korean Ferry Disasterâ) taking nearly 300 lives, most of them young students.
I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts, and because my birthday is in April I always recognize stand out cases all seem to occur or end (court convictions), in the month of April. Of course I always thought about the Titanic and Chernobyl. This morning on the way in to work, another podcast crime was in April and I decided to google tragedy in April. Jeez what a mess my birth month is. As for all the idiots questioning your DATA… that really is not the point. The point is some of the worst of the worst of historical tragedies DID occur in April. Even without a graph it is obvious. Thanks for writing this, I know I am not the only crazy person out there thinking it now.
My birthday is on the 15th of April. I figured since I was born near the dates of these events that that’s why I’m unlucky.
I wish you’d expanded on the Apr dates a bit more. I know the dates you included seem to correlate with more tragedy (I’ve noticed this as well) but Apr 24 seems to be very significant for some reason. I’ve kept track for years and it’s what brought me here this morning. Do people turn into monsters or just become ultra stupid creating even more chaos on Apr 24. Wish I could find more info. I dread the dates in Apr you did focus on but the 24th seems to eclipse them all.