History from Asia
8 verified stories set in Asia.
The Worst Industrial Disaster in History Happened While a City Slept.
On the night of December 2–3, 1984, over forty tons of lethal methyl isocyanate gas erupted from an American-owned Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India. Carried by cool midnight winds, the heavier-than-air toxic plume enveloped densely populated shantytowns surrounding the plant while families slept. Within hours, thousands suffocated in agonizing blindness. Over five hundred thousand survivors suffered permanent respiratory and ocular damage, making Bhopal the deadliest industrial catastrophe in human history.
They Built a Cannon Out of Five Nations' Junk to Survive a 55-Day Siege
During the fifty-five-day Siege of the International Legations in Peking in 1900, foreign legation guards and thousands of Chinese Christian refugees were trapped and besieged by imperial Qing forces. Facing heavy artillery fire without any big guns of their own, Chinese refugees excavated an old, rusted British bronze cannon barrel from an abandoned junk shop. American Navy Gunner Joseph Mitchell mounted the barrel onto a spare Italian gun carriage, loaded it with Russian shells found in a well, primed it with German powder, and fired it using American gunners. Nicknamed the 'International Gun' or 'Old Betsy,' this improvised cannon shattered enemy barricades until an international relief column broke through.
A Firework Scared the Crowd. Their Floating Shrine Sank.
On July 2, 1993, during the annual fluvial parade in Bocaue, Bulacan, an overloaded multi-deck floating pagoda carrying nearly one thousand Catholic pilgrims suddenly capsized when a stray firework sparked mass panic. Over two hundred devotees drowned in the murky river, immortalizing 13-year-old Boy Scout hero Sajid Bulig.
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Rumors Said Foreigners Were Eating Babies. Seoul Panicked.
In June 1888, a terrifying mass hysteria engulfed Seoul when rumors alleged Western missionaries and Japanese residents were kidnapping Korean infants to harvest their eyes for camera lenses and boil their organs into photographic chemicals. The resulting riots brought the Joseon Dynasty to the brink of international war.
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A Feared Emir Spared a Man Because He Couldn't Stop Laughing
In the 1840s, during the peak of the Great Game in Central Asia, Nasrullah Khan, the ruthless Emir of Bukhara, imprisoned and beheaded British officers Charles Stoddart and Arthur Conolly. When eccentric missionary Reverend Joseph Wolff arrived in full Anglican clerical robes to investigate their fate, the feared tyrant burst into uncontrollable laughter and spared his life.
Earthquakes Shook This Volcano Island for Days. Then It Joined the Mainland.
In January 1914, earthquakes shook the volcanic island of Sakurajima in southern Japan. Then its west flank burst open, and minutes later the other side erupted too. That evening a powerful earthquake struck Kagoshima City. The lava that followed filled the strait and joined the island to the Osumi Peninsula for good.
A Prison Built So No Two Inmates Could Meet
Completed by the British Raj in 1906 on Port Blair in the remote Andaman Islands, the Cellular Jail was an architectural panopticon containing 693 individual solitary confinement cells. Built to crush the spirit of Indian political dissidents through absolute isolation and torturous labor, the fortress became known as 'Kala Pani' (Black Waters).
A Pearl Farmer Burns His Own Pearls in Public
Kokichi Mikimoto cultivated pearls in Japan and promoted his business with public pearl burnings. His early half-round pearls and his later adoption of the Mise-Nishikawa method were different stages of the story.