Nitpicking: The invasion of Normandy took place on June 6, 1944. (The invasion was originally scheduled for June 5, but was postponed a day due to bad weather.)
I stand corrected, my apologies.
Leave 'im alone, he’s on a roll.
[sub]Psst . . . Abby - WHOOSH![/SUB]
Abby, Hubzilla’s comments were a reference to the classic film Animal House, one of the greatest works of the last century. (It’s right up there with Citizen Kane, I swear.)
Wow, I don’t think I could have posted a more depressing question. 
I would have done the google thing myself, but this question occurred to me as I was logging off to go to school. Thank you everybody for doing the legwork, and plodding through all those numbers. The way I’m feeling, I probably wouldn’t have been able to handle it. Jesus…
Since this IS G.Q. and NOT B.B.Q. Pit, I’ll say this as very politely as I can.
Quixotic, how about if you save the scatalogical insultingly immature remarks like " whoosh" for the Pit, where they belong.
AbbySthrnAccent did some fair and good web research, to answer a percieved question. It hardly warranted a snide and insulting retort. Perhaps simply explaining the source of your post might have been a bit more in line with what we usually do here in G.Q..
And, no, I’m not posing as a Moderator. I’m behaving as a Member. I can’t imagine you’ll apologize, but know that some of us here actually appreciated the effort that went into the research, just as we do for anyone who does legwork on behalf of a query.
And, as a film lover- Citizen Kane has everything, and Animal House has pedophelia, vomiting in public and anarchy. It was fine at the age of 16. It doesn’t really hold up IMHO.
Cartooniverse
Um, I think Quix was simply observing that Abby did not “get” the fact that Hubzilla was making an Animal House reference.
I’m not seeing any genuine insults here. Am I missing something? And if not, can we please return to the OP?
I haven’t seen Animal House and did not get the reference. My apologies to everyone.
The greatest known disaster in terms of loss of life was an earthquake in Tangshan, China, at 3:42 a.m. on July 28, 1976. The (official?) death toll for that quake was 242,419. However, it’s unlikely that all of them died the same day.
Not to beat a ex-equine, but just in case Cartooniverse runs across this again. “Whoosh” is not scatological, nor especially insulting. It’s just the sound a joke going over a person’s head.
A quick Google search turned up a death toll for Iwo Jima of 6800-7000, with 17000 injured. But Okinawa was bloodier, with 7600 dead and 55000 injured. That one probably tops the WTC disaster, although I don’t think they were all killed in a single day.
Still…on a global scale, that doesn’t remotely compare to 70,000 Japanese dead in Nagasaki; 130,000 dead in the bombing of Dresden, Germany; approx. 800,000 dead in the ethnic cleansing of Rwanda; 1.8 million dead in the Cambodian Khmer Rouge; etc. etc. We Americans really do have it easy, you know.
Iwo and Okinawa were also fairly long campaigns, not single-day incidents.
As these boards have shown in the past, there is a slightly different superlative for virtually any major bloody event in U.S. history. The list I offered above was simply to show where this most recent event fits in the overall picture.
As I hope I implied before, the attacks of September 11 are (and hopefully will be) unique, and therefore do not compare easily with any prior events.
Antietam
According to Battles and Leaders, casualties at the battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg in September 1862, conventionally the bloodiest day in American history, were:
Army of the Potomac (Union), 2108 dead, 9549 wounded, 753 missing or captured, total casualties 12,410 out of an army of 87,000, of whom about 60,000 were engaged.
Army of Northern Virginia (Confederate), 1512 dead, 7816 wounded, 1844 missing or captured, total casualties of 11,172 from a force Gen. Lee reported as being less than 40,000.
So, dead on the field for both armies combined of about 3600, as opposed to the approximately 7000 dead at WTC, the Pentagon and the crash in Pennsylvania. The difference, of course is that every one of those killed at Antietam was a soldier and was deliberately in harm’s way, while not one of those killed on Sep.11 was a combatant in any sense of the word.
D-Day was actually relative low in casualties, but it serves as our most known, and most romantic battle of the war. The conditions on omaha beach and such give people a false impression that there were massive casualties.
For perspective, more people died in the D-Day rehearsal (off the coast of England) than in the actual invasion. A few german equivelants of PT boats really ruined everyone’s day.
Senor: According to the US Army history of D-Day cited above, some 700 people died when the LST landing craft were sunk during the rehearsal. That’s far cry from the 1200+ confirmed killed on D-Day itself, not to mention the missing.
No insult implied, intended or imparted. 
It should at least be noted that not everyone lost in the WTC was an American, per se. I recall seeing that as many as 500 were British, and there were many other nationalities involved as well. Which may bring the number of U.S. citizens lost to fewer than 6,000.
Still a horrific toll by any measure, to be sure. Just didn’t want to lose sight that this tragedy and the unifying response has thus far transcended borders.
According to this site discussing the Battle of the Somme, over four months of battle both sides “lost” (they don’t say whether that means died, or dead and wounded, but “lost” sounds like “died” to me)1.2 million men.
My mind can’t even comprehend that large a number of dead.
Wouldn’t the military personnel at the Pentagon be considered combatants?