Throughout US history, the working class has fought for better wages and working conditions. These struggles often became violent, and it is important to remember the men and women who died to bring us the weekend, the eight-hour workday, the end of child labor, job safety, and so on.

Today, we have very sanitized images of striking workers—folks walking in circles with picket signs while chanting catchy slogans about unfair labor practices. Perhaps after a few days of interrupted business, workers and their bosses will sit down and work out some compromises.

For most of American history, going on strike meant something far more radical. It was an indictment not only of individual work sites but also of a social order in which few were rich and most were desperately poor. Going on strike could—and often did—mean being beaten by strikebreakers, being shot at by National Guardsmen, or even having bombs dropped on you from biplanes.

10 The Great Railroad Strike

On July 14, 1877, railway workers in Martinsburg, Virginia, went on strike to protest the third pay cut within a year. Workers disrupted rail operations and prevented all train traffic. The strike soon spread to Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Missouri. It was the first national strike in US history.

Within six days, first blood was drawn when Maryland National Guard troops confronted striking workers in Baltimore and opened fire on them—killing 11 and wounding 40.^[1] Over the following two days, Pennsylvania National Guard troops killed 40 striking workers in Pittsburgh, firing upon crowds and bayoneting the strikers. At the same time, federal troops killed as many as 18 striking workers on the streets of St. Louis.

This violence proliferated. As many as 44 strikers were killed in Pennsylvania, 30 in Chicago, and eight in New York. By the end of the strike, more than 100 workers had been killed by cops, National Guard troops, and federal soldiers.

In the aftermath of the widespread violence and destruction, both workers and state governments took the events as a sign of a great struggle to come. State governments began growing their National Guard regiments, while labor unions ramped up recruitment and organizing efforts. It would be nearly a century before the bloody contest would come to an end.

9 Bay View Massacre

On May 1, 1886, over 200,000 working-class men and women kicked off a nationwide campaign to win a nationally recognized and enforced eight-hour workday. In Milwaukee, such efforts led to the mobilization of 12,000 workers.

By May 3, the striking workers had managed to shut down every factory in Milwaukee with the exception of the North Chicago Railroad Rolling Mills Steel Foundry in Bay View. Fifteen hundred strikers mobilized to march upon the mills and encourage the workers to join the strike.^[2]

Meanwhile, Milwaukee business owners were growing understandably anxious. Since day one of the strike, they had been pressuring Wisconsin Governor Jeremiah Rusk to call in National Guard troops to end the strike. For three days, Rusk resisted the employers’ demands. However, by the morning of May 4, several companies of the local Guardsmen had arrived at the mill, 250 men in total.

On May 4, the situation grew tense as striking workers hurled rocks and insults at the National Guardsmen. In response, the soldiers fired rounds above the workers’ heads. By this point, the pressure on Rusk had reached a breaking point. That night, he ordered Captain Treaumer, who commanded the National Guard companies, to shoot at any striking worker who attempted to enter the mill.

On May 5, the striking workers again assembled, chanting for an eight-hour workday. They were approaching the line of National Guardsmen when Treaumer gave the order to begin firing upon the crowd of workers. The volley killed 15, including a retired bystander and a 13-year-old schoolboy who had excitedly joined the crowd.

The violence had the intended effect of breaking the strike. As a result, it would be many years before the common implementation of the eight-hour day.

8 Morewood Massacre

On February 2, 1891, more than 10,000 coke oven operators and miners halted all work in the expansive coke fields of Morewood, Pennsylvania. Organized by the United Mine Workers union, the workers demanded better wages and an eight-hour day.

Negotiations between the striking workers and US industrialist Henry Clay Frick continued through the rest of February and into March. The strike nearly ended on March 26 when talks neared a wage agreement. The negotiations did not pan out.

On March 30, over 1,000 striking workers damaged company property, destroying coke ovens and damaging railway lines in Morewood. In response, Pennsylvania Governor Robert E. Pattison ordered in local National Guard troops.

As striking workers began mobilizing again on April 2, the troops opened fire on the unarmed workers. Seven men were killed. When this did not stop the strikes, Frick called upon 100 strikebreakers to regularly attack and harass the strikers. By May, the strike broke and the beaten, bloodied workers returned to the coke mines and furnaces.^[3]

Three years later, conditions had not improved. Matthew J. Welsh, a worker in the coke fields, sent the following letter to the Pittsburgh Times, which was published on April 14, 1894:

The workingmen, and especially the Hungarians, of the coke region are represented as an ignorant class of men. Certainly we are to a certain extent or we would not be toiling our lives out with work that former day slaves never dreamed of on a coke yard or in the mines. Ignorant as we are, we know that it is time to quit work and die of starvation rather than be trying to work and starving at the same time.

7 Pullman Strike

On May 11, 1894, the recently formed American Railway Union went on strike against the Pullman Company in Chicago, Illinois. The workers sought union recognition, a key step in securing fair wages and working hours. Like the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, railroad workers across the country went on strike, partly in solidarity, partly to win an improvement of their own working conditions.

At its zenith, more than 250,000 workers were striking across 27 states, bringing railroad traffic in much of the nation to a grinding halt and disrupting every major industry. This put enormous pressure on local, state, and even the federal government to end the strike swiftly—and brutally, if needed.

In June, President Grover Cleveland mobilized a massive force of thousands of US Marshals as well as 12,000 US Army troops. These marshals and soldiers deployed across Nebraska, Iowa, Colorado, Oklahoma, California, and Illinois.

Troop responses to the striking workers varied, narrowly avoiding violent clashes in some regions such as Sacramento while killing more than a dozen strikers in Chicago, the heart of the strike. In total, more than 30 workers were gunned down by state and federal troops. Many more were wounded.^[4]

6 Lattimer Massacre

In August 1897, the Lehigh and Wilkes-Barre Coal Company laid off coal miners from the Lattimer mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Those who remained faced wage cuts, increased rent for living on company properties, and cost cutting measures that meant longer hours and increasingly dangerous working conditions.

Such conditions gave rise to a strike. The workforce consisted largely of immigrant workers, primarily of Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian, and German origin. By September, as many as 10,000 workers were on strike. Initially, they were successful in negotiating higher wages. But the company broke the promise, prompting further outrage among the strikers.

By this point, the mine owners, growing increasingly frustrated at the loss of revenue and their inability to dupe workers back into the mines, called upon local Sheriff James L. Martin to disperse the strike.

Initially hesitant, Sheriff Martin organized a posse on September 10 to confront some 300–400 (mostly Slavic and German) unarmed strikers in Lattimer who were on their way to support the unionizing efforts of other local coal miners.

When the sheriff’s demands to disperse were repeatedly ignored, one of his men shouted, “Shoot the sons of bitches.” The posse opened fire on the peaceful, unarmed crowd. Nineteen men were killed, and many were shot in the back.^[5]

The nation immediately understood that this massacre was different. In previous strikebreaking efforts, law enforcement could at least attempt to justify their violence by pointing to the aggression and unarmed violence of striking workers. However, in Lattimer, the strikers were simply walking by. A monument to the slain workers in Lattimer reads:

It was not a battle because they were not aggressive, nor were they defensive because they had no weapons of any kind and were simply shot down like so many worthless objects, each of the licensed life-takers trying to outdo the others in the butchery.

5 Chicago Teamsters’ Strike

In April 1905, workers at the Montgomery Ward department store went on strike in Chicago, Illinois. Their chief complaint was that the owner subcontracted to nonunion workers. This minor labor dispute rapidly grew when the Teamsters Union launched strikes in solidarity with the department store workers.^[6]

The Teamsters had a strong Chicago membership. About 30,000 out of its 45,000 total members were in the Windy City. Soon, nearly every major employer in the metropolitan area of Chicago was affected.

In response, the Employers’ Association of Chicago raised millions of dollars (adjusted for inflation) to hire a massive force of strikebreakers. These men received special protections from the courts, allowing them great leniency in dishing out violence.

The Teamsters and other union strikers often clashed with the strikebreakers. By the time the strike ended in August, more than 20 striking workers had been killed in clashes with strikebreakers (none of whom were killed). More than 400 workers were also injured.

4 Paint Creek–Cabin Creek Strike

On April 18, 1912, West Virginia coal miners at Cabin Creek, under the banner of the United Mine Workers, went on strike. Among their demands were union recognition, better wages, and improved working conditions. Shortly afterward, nearby miners at Paint Creek joined in.

Tensions escalated when the mine owners hired the infamous Baldwin–Felts Detective Agency to end the strike.^[7] Little more than a gang of thugs, the strikebreakers harassed the striking miners for months, often sabotaging their food, beating them, and even shooting at them from afar. By September, after months of standoff, thousands of coal miners from neighboring regions of West Virginia were moving to join the existing strikers.

While skirmishes were frequent, progress toward any resolution was not. Months passed. Frustrated by the impasse and the enormous loss of revenue, mine owners encouraged local law enforcement to increase their violence against the striking workers.

In February 1913, 10 months into the standoff, Kanawha County Sheriff Bonner Hill and a group of detectives resorted to truly desperate and brutal measures of repression. They brought in a heavily armored, weaponized train and assaulted the strikers’ camp with high-powered rifles and machine guns, deliberately targeting the homes of strike leaders.

The vulgar display of violence demoralized the strikers. But they continued to resist for another five months until the strike was completely broken in July 1913. Over the course of the 15-month strike, more than 50 workers were killed and many more were wounded. It is also estimated that many died from starvation, disease, and related causes due to the conditions of the strikers’ camp.

3 Ludlow Massacre

In September 1913, approximately 12,000 coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado, went on strike to protest low wages and unsafe working conditions. Colorado was the deadliest state for coal miners, with a death rate about twice the national average.

The strike had been organized with the help of the United Mine Workers. Along with their other demands, the workers sought union recognition because unionized mines had 40 percent fewer workplace deaths.

Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, which owned and operated the coal mines, began evicting striking workers and their families from the company towns in which they lived. The workers moved with their families into a nearby tent colony that they had set up in anticipation of such an event.

The mine owners hired the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency—little more than a private gang of armed thugs—to break the strike. For months, the “detectives” harassed the strikers in their camp. At night, the thugs would shine floodlights into the camp, sometimes firing randomly at tents and occasionally maiming and even killing workers.^[8]

In October 1913, after a bloody month of violence, Colorado Governor Elias M. Ammons ordered the National Guard to move into the area. The miners had initially hoped that the arrival of the militiamen would bring peace and end the violent attacks they endured daily at the hands of the strikebreakers.

This proved little more than wishful thinking as the sympathies of the soldiers became clear. They palled around with the strikebreakers, and the two forces became nearly indistinguishable.

Six months passed. Progress toward any resolution was nonexistent. Unable to tolerate the strikers’ colony any longer, the mine owners urged the strikebreakers and militiamen to take drastic measures. So on the morning of April 20, 1914, as 1,000 men, women, and children were getting ready for their day, machine gun fire ripped through the camp.

The volley left 13 immediately dead. The leader of the strike was lured out of the camp to “negotiate a truce,” but he was executed instead by National Guard troops. That evening, the militiamen and strikebreakers moved into the camp, setting fire to it.

By the following day, the camp was mostly abandoned. One worker picking his way through the camp uncovered the burned corpses of two women and 11 children. The massacre sparked national outrage.

In Denver, the United Mine Workers prepared for war. Hundreds of armed strikers from nearby striker colonies marched to the Ludlow region. Thus began the Colorado Coalfield Wars, a brutal period of widespread armed conflict between workers and National Guard troops in the state.

Although the period of intense conflict ended by the beginning of May, the strike would continue until December. It ended in defeat for the workers. By the end of the conflict, nearly 200 people had died.

2 The Battle Of Blair Mountain

In May 1920, agents of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency went to Logan County, West Virginia, at the behest of local mine owner-operators to prevent efforts by miners to form a union. Upon arrival, the agents began evicting the families of miners suspected of unionization efforts.

As the Baldwin-Felts men worked their way through the town of Matewan, locals began to take notice, along with the mayor and Police Chief Sid Hatfield. Numerous armed miners had also arrived. The ensuing confrontation erupted into gunfire, leaving two miners, the mayor, and seven Baldwin-Felts agents dead. Sid Hatfield became a local hero to the working people.

For the next 15 months, a protracted labor dispute carried on. Miners sabotaged equipment and went on strike, while mine owners continued to fire workers, evict them, and bring in new workers. The extended dispute took a dramatic turn when Sid Hatfield was murdered by the brother of two Baldwin-Felts agents who had been slain in Matewan.

Miners all across the region began pouring out of the mountains to join forces and take up arms, intent on ending the tyranny of mine owners and their hired guns. As many as 13,000 miners marched on Logan and Mingo Counties to unite many more thousands of miners, drive out the hired gunmen who constantly terrorized them, and unionize the southern counties of West Virginia. It was the largest armed insurrection since the US Civil War.

Meanwhile, Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin—securely in the pocket of the regional coal mine owners—was given sizable funds to put together a private military force to stop the workers’ march. Chafin and his men set up on Blair Mountain, a daunting natural obstacle which lay in the strikers’ path.

The first skirmishes broke out between strikers and hired goons on August 20, 1921. A brief agreement to cease the march came to a quick end when Chafin, displeased at letting his assembled force go to waste, murdered several union sympathizers in a nearby town. Infuriated, the strikers continued their siege of Blair Mountain.

Chafin employed pilots to drop surplus munitions (bombs and gas) left over from World War I onto the workers. President Warren Harding ordered federal troops to move into the area and even threatened to deploy Martin MB-1 bombers against the striking workers.^[9]

Instead, under the command of General Billy Mitchell, the planes were used to run reconnaissance. The troops arrived on September 2. Fearing a bloodbath, strike leaders disbanded the march. As many as 100 strikers were killed during the conflict.

1 Memorial Day Massacre

On May 26, 1937, Cleveland steelworkers went on strike when minor steel companies refused to follow the US Steel Corporation in adopting union demands of recognition, eight-hour workdays, and better pay. The work stoppage in Cleveland led to calls for strikes by two major unions—the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO)—which took place in many cities across the country.

On May 30, the Memorial Day holiday, approximately 1,500 striking steelworkers and allies in Chicago assembled at the SWOC headquarters. They planned to march to the nonunionized Republic Steel mill nearby in protest.

At the gates of the mill, the unarmed, peaceful crowd—which included women and children—was met by 250 armed Chicago policemen, who were provisioned and paid for by Republic Steel. Without provocation, the assembled policemen fired over 100 shots at the crowd, killing 10 and wounding more than 100. Most were shot in the back.^[10]

Not one officer was indicted for the shooting. Centered in Cleveland, the strike was gradually defeated, with Chicago being the only violent incident during the entire work stoppage. However, the massacre of Chicago workers and the strike brought national attention to the plight of the steelworkers. Five years later, they won union recognition and the fulfillment of their demands.

Zachary is a graduate student in history in Arizona. His work focuses on the struggle of the American working class and labor movement. He runs the American Labor History Facebook page.

One of the more interesting impacts of the Chinese coronavirus, COVID-19, on the world, where pictures are concerned, isn’t so much what we see, as what we don’t see. While people have sequestered themselves inside their homes, the world has gone mostly silent and empty.

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As the crisis continues across the world, pictures are emerging online of empty places that normally hold thousands on a daily basis. Bodies are piling up in cities unequipped to handle the influx, and the world watches from the Internet, where these ten images show COVID-19’s impact on the world.

10 The Great Mosque And Kaaba In Mecca, Saudi Arabia

Photo credit: ABDEL GHANI BASHIR/AFP via Getty Images

Odds are, even if you’re not a member of the Islamic religion, you know of the Great Mosque and Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It’s the site of the Hajj, a pilgrimage that every Muslim must do at least once in their lives if they are able to do so. The site often sees as many as five million people during the Dhu al-Hijjah on the Islamic calendar. In 2020, it falls between July 22nd and August 19th in 2020, and if the world returns to any semblance of normalcy by then, millions of people will be seen visiting the holy site.

This picture was taken on March 5th, and while that’s not a date of any particular significance on the Islamic calendar, the Great mosque typically sees thousands of visitors on any given day. The reason it was empty was due to the government’s order that it be completely cleaned and sanitized for fear of spreading COVID-19. It opened the next day, but still saw far fewer visitors than normal. One reason the numbers were low was because the Kingdom banned foreign visitors from entering the country on February 27th.^[1]

9 Beirut’s Corniche Promenade In Lebanon

Photo credit: Mohamed Azakir/Reuters

In the Lebanese city of Beirut, the Corniche Promenade stands as one of the top tourist destinations. There is a seaside promenade lined with palm trees and a beautiful view of the sea, where millions of visitors and locals can be seen enjoying the area throughout the year. Typically, the site is bustling with activity with everything from people going on walking tours to visiting the local restaurants but wasn’t spared from the outbreak, and throughout the month of March and into April, Corniche Promenade has been a ghost town.

This photograph taken by Mohamed Azakir shows the popular promenade completely devoid of human activity of any kind. Gone are the joggers, the walkers, the buskers, the famous pushcart vendors, and everyone else who would normally be seen on an otherwise beautiful day. The atypical shot of Corniche Promenade is the result of a government-mandated curfew, leaving many on lockdown within their homes. Sights like this are common all over the world as the COVID-19 crisis worsens, and this is just one of many similar images found all over the Internet.^[2]

8 Social Distancing In Colombo, Sri Lanka

Photo credit: Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters

While the year 2020 may go down in history as being the one where a global pandemic swept across the globe, more people will likely think back on it with two words: social distancing. That’s a term few had ever heard or considered using outside of the occasional introvert, but with COVID-19 spreading exponentially throughout global populations, social distancing became the norm. Societies, where people typically greeted one another with a hearty handshake or a kiss on each cheek, find themselves standing as far from one another as possible.

This picture was taken in Sri Lanka by Dinuka Liyanawatte outside a grocery store in Colombo. The people in the picture can be seen wearing masks, and are standing approximately one meter apart. Most governments and the WHO are telling people to double that distance, but it’s not always possible, leaving many in unsafe, yet desperately in need of supplies. Sri Lanka placed a curfew on its citizens prior to this photograph but relaxed it for a short time following a lull in newly reported cases.^[3]

7 Mobile Morgues In Refrigerated Trucks Holding Bodies In New York City

Photo credit: John Minchillo/AP

One scene nobody wants to be reminded of when thinking back on this crisis years from now is any that shows the toll the virus has taken on the people. Some of the hardest-hit cities quickly learned that there wasn’t just going to be a lack of hospital beds for the sick; there was also going to be a burden on morgues, coroners, and morticians. Everyone was so focused on the need for ventilators and hospital beds, few thought of what to do when the bodies began piling up. Fortunately, there were some who planned ahead, and that brings us to the picture featured here.

This shot, taken by John Minchillo, shows bodies being loaded into refrigerated trucks outside a New York City hospital. NYC was one of the hardest-hit American cities in the early days of the crisis, and its hospitals quickly reached capacity on a number of services, which include the storage of the dead.^[] The Brooklyn hospital is one of many that have turned to such measures to store bodies, and the city has many. By April 8th, more than 4,000 people died in New York City alone.^[4]

6 Quarantined Italians Singing Together From Their Balconies

Photo credit: Mairo Cinquetti/NurPhoto/Getty Images

Soon after China began implementing massive quarantine measures in Wuhan and other areas, the numbers being reported from the country showed a decline in cases and deaths. As those numbers began falling, they skyrocketed in places like Italy, which was one of the hardest-hit nations outside of China throughout the month of March. As social distancing became the norm in Italy, its citizens found themselves isolated in their homes with little to do other than worry about what was happening in the hospitals and just outside their doors.

In an attempt to combat the isolation and sense of dread many were experiencing, people all over the nation went to their balconies and began making music with one another. These musical flash mobs came together all over Italy, and on March 13th, people all over the country went to their balconies to collectively sing the national anthem, “Inno di Mameli,” in a show of unity during the crisis. This picture taken by Mairo Cinquetti shows a woman singing from her balcony, and if you haven’t seen this one, there are thousands of photographs and videos of people singing to and with one another all over the Internet.^[5]

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5 Dr. Li Wenliang’s Selfie From His Hospital Bed Shortly Before Succumbing To COVID-19

Photo credit: Dr. Li Wenliang

COVID-19 has affected millions of people all over the world, but the most-threatened group isn’t the elderly and immunocompromised; it’s the hospital workers who fight against the virus every day. All over the world, doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers spend long days and even longer nights tending to the sick and dying with little to no personal protective equipment keeping them safe. One of the first doctors to fall to the disease, though not the first, and sadly, not the last, was Dr. Li Wenliang of Wuhan, China.

Dr. Li was the whistleblower, who sounded the initial alarm over a virus he had been observing that was similar to SARS. He was admonished by the Communist Party of China for “making false comments on the Internet.”^[] After contracting the virus he was fighting against, he took this photo from his hospital bed. He died on February 7th, and this photograph went viral. Shortly after his death, the Communist Party of China issued a “solemn apology” for its admonishment of Dr. Li, though, by that time, the virus had spread outside of the country’s borders.^[6]

4 Russian Cargo Plane Filled With Supplies Lands In The USA

As the United States government began to take the impending threat of COVID-19 seriously, it became apparent that personal protective equipment and ventilators were going to be in short supply. Stories of government stockpiles containing thousands of unusable ventilators due to maintenance contract expirations and warnings by officials to limit PPE to people who were showing symptoms began popping up all over the Internet. Governors were set to bid against one another for equipment from suppliers, and some hospital workers were forced to reuse masks for up to a week at a time.

Supplies were a problem, but some countries that weren’t initially hit as hard as the United States did what they could to help. Russia filled a plane with supplies and sent them to the United States, which resulted in this photograph that circulated online for weeks. The aircraft was sent to the States following a one-on-one phonecall between both nation’s leaders. President Putin made the gesture with the consideration that should the US see a drop in cases while Russia finds itself dealing with a rise, the States will “reciprocate if need be.”^[7]

3 Homeless In Las Vegas Sleeping In Social Distancing Grids

Photo credit: John Locher/AP

During a pandemic where governments are telling all of their citizens to self-isolate themselves in their homes, it quickly became apparent that there was a sizable population that couldn’t follow that guidance. The homeless are at greater risk of catching the disease, but that’s not solely the result of their having to sleep outside; it’s mostly due to their close proximity with one another. Whether they are on the streets or in shelters, homeless people often find themselves stacked closely with one another, and that makes them susceptible to COVID-19, and it also makes it more likely that they will infect others.

Exponential infection is one of the greatest concerns where COVID-19 is concerned, and in cities like Las Vegas, the way the city has had to deal with it made international news. Shelters were forced to close amidst the crisis, leaving as many as 500 on the streets. The city painted grids on the upper parking lot of the Cashman Center, with each box being meant as a place for one person each to sleep. Unfortunately, all good intentions being what they are, people online pointed out that the squares were too close together, negating the need for social distancing, which further spread the image to others as it became viral.^[8]

2 Healthcare Workers’ Faces After Working With COVID-19 Patients For Days

Photo credit: Rachel Adams McCreight/Nicola Sgarbi

A term few people outside of the healthcare industry heard before the crisis, “N95,” has become one almost everyone around the world now knows. N95 masks are robust disposable masks capable of stopping the spread of COVID-19 and many other airborne pathogens, which is one of the reasons they quickly became necessary for the world’s healthcare workers. Unfortunately, they became harder and harder to find as the virus spread, which is why so many doctors and nurses found themselves having to reuse them for much longer than they normally would have.

Supply issues aside, N95 masks work well because they sit snugly on the face, and aren’t the most comfortable things to wear for extended periods of time. Throughout the month of March, people began sharing photos of what they looked like after working for hours and days while wearing the masks. Faces bruised around the eyes and mouth became a common site as more and more healthcare workers joined in with their own shots. The photos don’t just show bruised and tired people, they show the men and women working on the front lines to combat the disease, many of whom worked for long 12, 18, and 24-hour shifts.^[9]

1 USNS Comfort And The Statue Of Liberty

Hospital beds, or more accurately, the lack of hospital beds became a problem shortly after COVID-19 reached the United States. It makes sense, as hospitals aren’t in the business of handling a global epidemic, they’re there to treat and care for patients under normal operating conditions. That works just fine when the world isn’t undergoing a pandemic, but in cities like New York City and Los Angeles, a shortage of hospital beds due to the influx of COVID-19 patients caused two distinct problems.

There weren’t enough beds for COVID-19 patients, and there were almost no beds available to people suffering from everything else. People needing surgery, chemo treatment, and every other issue folks go to the hospital for were running into a lack of capacity in treating them. To combat the problem, the USN sent two ships, the USNS Comfort and USNS Mercy, to New York City and Los Angeles, respectively. Both vessels were meant to ease the burden by providing 1,000 hospital beds for patients not suffering from COVID-19, though since they have arrived, the USNS Comfort has taken on patients suffering from the disease.

Shots like this one showing the Statue of Liberty in the foreground of the USNS Comfort spread all over the Internet as it approached the port. The arrival indicated a show of support and a sign of hope in the days to come.^[10]

+ Toilet Paper

For whatever reason, people around the world began panic-buying as the COVID-19 crisis worsened. Even in nations that had yet to experience a single case, people flocked to stores, but they weren’t there to buy rice, beans, or other longlasting sustainable foods; they were there to buy toilet paper — and lots of it. It’s rather inexplicable, but toilet paper became the hot commodity of March 2020, and people would line up to get a single package of rolls in much the same way folks had to line up their cars to buy gasoline during the OPEC Oil Embargo.

For weeks, you couldn’t find a single roll of toilet paper, and pictures like this one could be seen all over social media and news sites. Supplies of paper products were completely absent from store shelves all over the world. This picture was taken by me at my local Neighborhood Walmart Market. Images like this one are common all over the Internet, and while it can be problematic for some, the companies that produce and install bidets are enjoying an upsurge in sales as more and more people realize they won’t have anything to wipe with very soon…^[11]

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