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Tens of thousands of people have welcomed Pope Francis to Rio de Janeiro. It’s a homecoming of sorts for the Catholic Church’s first Latin American Pope.

Here’s our top selection of the biggest crowd-drawing events from around the world.

Mystic River, India

Probably the world’s largest gathering ever, the Kumbh Mela festival in India occurs every 12 years. An estimated 8 million Hindus gathered at the mythical rivers of the Ganges and Saraswati in February, to be cleansed of sins and seek salvation.

It’s thought that around 80-100 million pilgrims visit in total throughout the 55-day festival.

 

Cheap Flights To India

Keep Calm and Celebrate, London

London is witness to many big gatherings and stages many significant events. However, there is one woman you could call the “Queen” of mass gatherings. In 1953, around 3 million people gathered in the capital to celebrate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Then, for her Golden Jubilee in 2002, an estimated one million people gathered outside Buckingham Palace to celebrate.

And a further one million got out the bunting in the Pall Mall area last year to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee.

 

 

Maggie May in Rio

Copacabana might be a famous Barry Manilow song, however it was a different crooner who set a biggest audience at a live concert record when he performed on the iconic beach in Rio.

Britain’s Rod Stewart belted out Maggie May and Da Ya Think I’m Sexy to a crowd of 3.5 million on New Year’s Eve in 1994, according to the Guinness Book of Records.

However, other reports estimate that 4.2 million people watched the rocker. That night was certainly the night for Rod.

 

 

Composing History

Another musician has broken his own record for having the largest-ever concert audience four times. French composer Jean Michel Jarre has been seen live by more than 8 million people in total.

In 1979, Jarre performed in Paris on Bastille Day to around one million spectators. There was a TV audience of more than 100 million reported as well.

In 1985, he performed in Houston to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Texas. In excess of 1.5 million people attended, according to the Guinness Book of Records.

For his second Bastille Day concert in Paris in 1990 around 2 million people attended. Then in 1997, he played in Moscow to around 3.5 million people, to celebrate the city’s 850th anniversary.

 

 

Breaking the Boston Curse

In Boston, an estimated 3 million baseball fans celebrated the Boston Red Sox World Series’ win in 2004. They weren’t just celebrating their team’s first title win in 86 years, but also the end of the infamous “Curse of the Bambino”. The curse, one of the best-known sporting superstitions, began when the team sold legendary pitcher Babe Ruth (nicknamed The Bambino) to the New York Yankees in 1919.

Before this, the Sox were one of the most successful teams in the competition. Fans were clearly delighted when the curse eventually ended – and the Sox won again in 2007.

 

 

World Cup Fiesta, Madrid

To more sporting fanatics. When Spain won its first ever World Cup in 2010, beating the Netherlands 1-0 in Johannesburg, an estimated 1.5 million patriotic fans turned out in Madrid to welcome them home.

The players held the trophy aloft on an open-top bus tour through the capital to scenes of great celebration and demands that the government declare a national holiday. Around a quarter of a million people had gathered on the city’s streets to watch the final itself.

 

 

Pope’s Blessing

One of the biggest crowd-pullers ever has been Pope John Paul II. No matter where in the world, or what event, people have gathered in their millions to see him.

When he visited Ireland in 1979, around 1.25 million turned up to see him – about a third of the country’s population at the time.

More than 5 million people attended a World Youth Day Rally in Manila, Philippines in 1995.

Around 2.5 million people showed up for a beatification mass he held in Kraków, Poland, his homeland. And in a fitting send-off, an estimated 2-4 million people attended his funeral in Rome in 2005.

 

 

New York Goes Green

Although it’s in a different country and often not on March 17, around 2-3 million people attend the annual St Patrick’s Day parade in New York City.

Founded in 1762, the parade predates any in Ireland. It’s the world’s oldest civilian parade and the largest in the United States with more than 150,000 participants. The route is 1.5 miles long and the procession takes 5 hours.

 

 

Annual Pilgrimage to Mecca

Lastly, to Saudi Arabia, for one of the largest annually occurring pilgrimages in the world. In 2012, an estimated 3.16 million people made the annual Hajj to Mecca.

Around 1.4 million of these were from Saudi and 1.75 million travelled from outside the country. The numbers have been steadily increasing over the years, with no fewer than 1.8 million people making the pilgrimage since 1996, increasing to more than 2 million since 2003.

 

Main Image: Mystic River, India by Seba Della y Sole Bossio

About the author

Oonagh ShielContent Manager at Cheapflights whose travel life can be best summed up as BC (before children) and PC (post children). We only travel during the school holidays so short-haul trips and staycations are our specialities!

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