Good article to provoke a variety of responses. I find it hard to assess a "worst year" and that we have to generalize by the amount of the population it has affected. An example is the famine of Ethiopia of 1983-1985. At over a million dead and chaos throughout, surely the worst few years in "their" history? Once we start to look at events for what they are and that people right now are having the worst year and some over the last few years in terms of wars had their "worst years" we can appreciate it's not the glory of a world event that matters but the ongoing events in different regions...even if it does not affect us...we are all equal after all, right?