The clash of worlds gave rise to fantastic hybrids, lasting myths, and appalling numbers of deaths from disease and violence.
The likes of Sky and TalkTalk, running their broadband services over BT's wires, complain of bad service and appalling numbers of missed appointments for customers.
Aid efforts were complicated by threats from the militants of al-Shabaab, who refused to let foreign agencies into southern and central Somalia where people were dying in appalling numbers.
And we could not make that difference – or begin to do our job – without the fixers, drivers and translators, who face the same risks and die in appalling numbers.
So you might think that someone given a platform at the New York Times, like Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld was in Sunday's paper, might have done more than simply note that women are attacked "in appalling numbers" and colleges mishandle rape cases.
We in the West don't really seem to care that Chinese employees work under awful conditions and die in appalling numbers — unless they make shiny things that we use.
The appalling numbers in this report tell us this malignancy is culture-wide, and thus, we are complicit in it- if only for our omissions, rather than commissions.
This is the reality for many sea turtles in the Gulf of Mexico, who have been turning up dead in appalling numbers.
