Hey, it's Alan, and I just wanted to let you know that you can now listen to the ongoing

history of new music early and ad-free on Amazon music, included with Prime.

Humanity has always been beset by disasters, whether they've been acts of God or something

we somehow brought on ourselves. War, disease, earthquakes, famine, floods, volcanic eruptions,

fire, plane crashes, industrial accidents, sinking ships, extreme weather. The worst disaster of all

time? Probably the influenza epidemic of 1918 to 1920. It's possible that up to a hundred

million people died during that three-year period.

Then again, World War II was worse. By some estimates, the death toll was 120 million.

And the black death of the 14th century was really, really bad. It may have claimed up to 200

million lives, or about 20% of the population of the planet at the time.

Then there are the kinds of things that happen when people are supposed to be having fun.

On February 14, 2004, the roof of an indoor water park in Moscow collapsed, killing 28 people.

On December 8th, 1863, up to 3,000 people were killed in a fire at a church celebration in Santiago, Chile.

Or how about something like this?

Sometime around the year, 283, a wall at Circus Maximus, the chariot racing stadium in Rome, collapsed.

It said that 13,000 spectators died. And that happened about 150 years after a

previous collapse where there were around 1,500 deaths. The universe is going to do what the universe

is going to do. You can be as careful as humanly possible, yet still get caught up in something

awful. This applies to the world of Rock, too.

It has seen its own situations where there has been loss of life.

These occasions need to be remembered and memorialized

so we can minimize the chances of these things ever happening again.

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