....Animals for our food: Worldwide, the annual slaughter of farm animals exceeds 50 billion animals, often in abject conditions. Every minute 1,680 animals are slaughtered for our food, most are killed almost as young as adults or even younger, while fast-growing chickens, in squalid poultry farms, are slaughtered at just 6-7 weeks of age. The egg industry in the US kills 250 million male chickens because they do not produce eggs and are therefore considered useless.
  Animals for work and war: ...
  Animals sacrificed to the gods: ...
  Animals used in experiments: ...
  Companion animals: Every year 6-8 million dogs and cats are taken to shelters in Europe, of which 3-4 million are euthanized due to not being adopted within the specified period of their stay. ...
  ...

  ...In 1757, in the famous Parisian “square of executions”, Place de Grève, and before a large crowd of spectators, a mentally disabled poor devil, known by the name of Damien, was tortured and executed for attacking with a knife and slightly wounding the “king of scandals”, Louis XV. Here is the horrific description that Voltaire left us: “They began by burning his hands in a brazier with scorching sulfur. Then they pulled the flesh from his arms, thighs and chest with large red-hot tongs. Then they poured molten lead mixed with resin and hot oil into all his wounds. These repeated tortures made the most horrible screams come out of his mouth. Then they tied his bleeding limbs to four horses that the executioner’s assistants whipped and they pulled the ropes, each one in its own direction. The pulling and jerking lasted an hour. The unfortunate man’s limbs lengthened but did not detach. The executioners finally cut some of his tendons and thus the limbs were detached from the body, one after the other. Damien, with one arm and two legs cut off, was still breathing and died only when the arm that remained was detached from his soaked in blood body”, (Dimitris Raftopoulos, “Critical Literature”).

  ...However, torture is not a monopoly of power, it often happens that deposed leaders are horribly tortured by a furious and sadistic mob. “Bound with collars and chains around the neck, Andronicus is led before Isaacius. After a savage beating, his beard and hair are torn out, all his teeth are pulled out with pliers. Women punch him in the mouth, then they cut off his right hand, blind him in his right eye and throw him in prison. The next morning they take him out of the cell, blind him in the other eye, put him on a mangy camel and carry him around the Agora. There they hand him over to the whims of the furious crowd. The lynching that follows is led by the beggars, the outcasts, the worst scum of the city. Prostitutes, butchers, porters, tanners, sewer robbers and tavern patrons. They beat him with clubs, throw cow bellies and donkey droppings in his face, poke him with pointed sticks, and stone him. A prostitute comes with a cauldron of boiling water and bathes him. They drag him to the Hippodrome, which is full of people, as it has been announced that Andronicus will be lynched there. They hang him upside down, while Andronicus, who is still alive, mumbles, “why do you keep breaking a broken reed?” They begin to cut pieces of his body. They rip out his genitals and stuff them into his mouth. He finally dies when a sword is thrust into his throat. His lifeless body was dismembered, the pieces were left to rot for many days in the Hippodrome and then thrown into the sea”, (Vasily Vasiliev, “Byzantine History”).

  In Los Angeles...

  In Transylvania...

  In Italy...

  In Mexico...

  In Assyria...

  In Tasmania...

  ...

  “Genocide is as much a human creation as art or prayer. From the time of the stone axe onwards, people have always used their tools to slaughter each other. People are animals who systematically manufacture weapons and have an insatiable appetite for killing. As J. Diamond states, “the wars between Greeks and Trojans, Rome and Chalcedon, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians had a common goal: the slaughter of the defeated regardless of sex or the killing of men and the enslavement of women”. In modern times, genocide is no less frequent. Between 1492 and 1990, at least 36 genocides took place, sometimes costing tens of thousands and sometimes tens of millions of people. Since 1950, 20 genocides have been committed, and at least three of them had over a million victims (Bangladesh, Cambodia, Rwanda)”, (John Gray, “Straw Dogs”).

  “...Artillery, gunfire, barrage of fire, gas zones, tanks, machine guns, bombs, grenades. All these are words, words, but they hide within them all the horror of the world. Our faces are peeled, our thoughts are annihilated. We are tired to death. When the attack comes, we have to beat many of our own with our fists, so that they wake up and follow. (...) We see people who are still alive, while some projectile has taken their skulls. We see soldiers lying down with their legs cut off. (...) Another one arrives at the first-aid station carrying in his hands his entrails, which keep escaping him and spill out...”, (Erich Maria Remarque, “All Quiet on the Western Front”).

  “The systematic massacre of Serbs began on the first day of the establishment of the independent state of Croatia, in 1941, and continued until 1945. The terror did not consist only in murder. The massacre included everything and everyone, old people, women, children. The rivers Sava and Drava, the Danube with its tributaries carried thousands of Serb corpses. The case of Mileva Bozinić is particularly horrific. Her child was torn out of her entrails. There is also the case of the roasted heads of Serbs, the pots filled with Serbian blood, the case of Serbs who were forced to drink the still warm blood of their relatives who had been massacred. Rapes took place even inside the sanctuaries of orthodox churches. In the town of Petrinja, a child was forced to rape his mother. There are detailed accounts of various atrocities. The Italians and Germans were astonished by these crimes. The Italians photographed a container containing more than three kilos of eyes of Serbs, another, from Dubrovnik, wearing a belt with severed Serb tongues hanging all around it... There are no similar cases in modern European history. We would have to go to Asia, to the time of Tamerlane or Genghis Khan, to encounter something similar”, (Marco Aurelio Rivelli, “Alojić Stepanović, the Archbishop of a Genocide”).

  “There are no devils left in Hell, they are all in Rwanda. (...) The rivers have swollen more than ever this year. First they bring down the bodies of men and teenagers who were massacred as they struggled to protect their mothers and sisters. Then come the women and girls who were snatched from their hiding places and butchered. Last come the babies, who may not even have any injuries: they were thrown into the river alive to drown. The bodies, or their parts, are carried by the river for about half an hour, that is how long it takes to wipe out a community, carry the victims to the riverbank, and throw them into the water. Then the river flows clear again for a while, until first men and teenagers, then women and then babies reappear on the surface, they meet again in the shallows and the river becomes their grave”, (Nancy Gibbs, Time, 16/5/1994).

  “Images of Rwanda swirl in my mind, like scenes from Hell. (...) A man at the edge of a mass grave laughs with satisfaction at having managed to throw the little lifeless body of a child right into the middle of the pit... (...) Five or six men fall on a passerby, beat him mercilessly, throw him down and trample his spine until the chilling sound of breaking is heard. It is a nightmare and there is nothing I can do or say to make it go away. It is Armageddon with commercial breaks, it is a testament that demons are not just among us, the demons are us”, (Lyall Watson, “Dark Nature”).

  Volcanic eruptions:

  ...The most “famous” volcanic eruption is that of Vesuvius, in ancient Rome, which lasted 19 hours, destroyed the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and killed about 30,000 people. A huge area was covered with burning ash of 400 degrees Celsius, and three meters high. Many of the bodies were found headless, because the brain reached a boiling point and the head exploded. Let’s look at the rest of the largest and deadliest of them.
  1613 BC, island of Thera, Aegean: number of dead unknown (from the tsunami).
  1816, Mount Tambora, Indonesia: 92,000 dead.
  1902, Mount Pelee, West Indies: 40,000 dead.
  1883, Mount Krakatoa, Indonesia: 36,000 dead.
  1985, Mount Nevado del Ruiz, Colombia: 23,000 dead.
  1792, Mount Unzen, Japan: 12-15,000 dead.
  etc...

  Earthquakes:

  1556, Shanxi, China: 830,000 dead.
  2010, Haiti: 300,000 dead.
  2004, Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, etc: 300,000 dead (from the tsunami).
  1976, Tangshan, China: 255,000 dead.
  1138, Aleppo, Syria: 230,000 dead.
  etc...

  Typhoons:

  1991, cyclone Korki, Bangladesh: 139,000 dead.
  2008, cyclone Nargis, Myanmar: 138,000 dead.
  etc...

  Epidemics:

  542-545, “Plague of Justinian” in Europe, Asia and Africa: killed about 100 million people.
  Plague: From 1334 in China until after 1664 in London, it was leaving and returning. Some estimate that it killed a total of perhaps 200 million people.
  1918-1920: Spanish flu: 20-40 million people.
  etc...

  Famines:

  1958-1962, China, 43,000,000 dead.
  1907, China, 25,000,000 dead.
  1783, Northern India, 11,000,000 dead.
  1932-1933, Russia, 10,000,000 dead.
  1770, Bengal, 10,000,000 dead.
  Russia...
  North Korea...
  Vietnam...
  France...
  Ireland...
  Biafra...
  Ethiopia...
  etc...

  Battles:

  ...