There have been worse years in U.S. history, and certainly worse years in world history, but most of us alive today have seen nothing like this one. You would need to be over 100 to remember the devastation of
World War I and the
1918 flu pandemic; roughly 90 to have a sense of the economic deprivation wrought by the
Great Depression; and in your 80s to retain any memory of
World War II and its horrors.