THREE TIMES THE WORLD ALMOST ENDED

1 THE BLACK DEATH

Also known as ‘the great mortality’, it came in three variants: bubonic, septicaemia and pneumonic plague. Symptoms differ for each strand but most common are swellings in the groin, armpits and neck and coughing up blood. The plague has never really died out, but most people in the 1300s believed prayer help to rid the earth of the pandemic.

2 CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS

In the Cold War, Russia armed Cuba with nuclear warheads in case they needed to strike America. The US did the same thing by putting Jupiter missiles in Turkey and Italy in preparation for bombing Russia. After America hit DEFCON 2, an increase in force readiness to just below maximum, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove Russian missiles from Cuba in exchange for the US respecting Cuba’s territorial sovereignty.

3 METEOR CLOSE HIT

Asteroid 2015 TB 145 is a massive asteroid that passed just 498 896km away from Earth, which is about 30% further from Earth than the moon is. An asteroid this size cannot destroy Earth , but can cause severe damage. The closest Earth will be to an asteroid impact is in 2029, when Aphophis, an asteroid 325m in size, could just miss it and hit satellites out. If Apophis crashes on Earth it will have an estimated impact of 510 megatons. That is more than two times the energy released by the Krakatoa eruption of 1883, an event that changed Earth’s climate for five years.