WEBVTT - SYMHC Classics: Year Without a Summer 0:00:02.480 --> 0:00:05.360 Happy Saturday, since the Year Without a Summer got a 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:08.400 very brief mention in our roller Coaster episode, we were 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:12.760 bringing that out as Today's Saturday Classic. And this episode 0:00:12.880 --> 0:00:15.760 kicks off with us talking about author Mary robin At Kawal, 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:18.560 who has actually been on the show since this episode 0:00:18.560 --> 0:00:21.919 came out. We interviewed her in twenty eighteen about her 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:25.599 Lady Astronaut Duology. Tracy did that interview that is set 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:28.800 during an alternate version of the Space Race. So we 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:32.640 talked about things like how she avoided anachronisms and various 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:35.440 real world historical people and events that played a role 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:37.839 in the books. So if folks are interested in hearing that, 0:00:37.920 --> 0:00:41.040 it's a really great talk. It came out on August twentieth, 0:00:41.120 --> 0:00:46.199 twenty eighteen. This episode came out on January twelfth, twenty fifteen, 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:52.519 So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, 0:00:52.760 --> 0:01:02.200 a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:07.360 I am Tracy and I'm Holly Frying. So perhaps you 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:11.279 have heard of Mary Robinett Kalal. Maybe you're a listener 0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:14.880 to this podcast. She has written, among other things, a 0:01:14.920 --> 0:01:18.240 series of novels that are known as the glamorous histories, 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:21.520 and these are basically Jane Austen novels with magic. So 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:23.640 if that sounds delightful to you and you have not 0:01:23.680 --> 0:01:27.920 read them, you will probably be delighted because they are 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:31.560 pretty charming and touching and funny. And the third one 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:35.080 was some of my most recent airplane reading while I 0:01:35.160 --> 0:01:39.080 was on a flight, and that book is called Without 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:42.520 a Summer. It's said in eighteen sixteen, and in addition 0:01:42.560 --> 0:01:47.320 to several running mentions of past podcast subjects the Luddites, 0:01:47.920 --> 0:01:52.760 there's ongoing discussion about about whether that year's unseasonably cold 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:56.880 weather is caused by magic. Basically, so this is not 0:01:57.120 --> 0:02:01.520 unseasonably cold like chillier than normal. It's unseasonably cold like 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:05.000 it's snowing in July and all of the crops have 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:10.040 frozen in the ground. So, in spite of the similarities 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:12.520 in their names, I was so absorbed in this book 0:02:12.880 --> 0:02:14.799 that it wasn't until the very end that I made 0:02:14.840 --> 0:02:19.360 the connection that this unseasonably called fictional setting is the 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:22.440 same as the real world event the year Without a Summer, 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:27.040 which is also a listener request from listener Cecile, so Cecil, 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:31.040 you can thank Mary Robinett Koal for bumping this to 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:35.240 the top of the list, because after we landed, I 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:37.600 was like, I want to learn more about that and 0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:42.640 what really happened. So this story actually starts with the volcano. 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:48.320 And the volcano, which was Tambora on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia, 0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:52.320 was probably not the only factor in eighteen sixteenth bizarre weather, 0:02:52.400 --> 0:02:54.320 and we'll talk about that a little bit more later, 0:02:54.800 --> 0:02:58.000 but it was definitely a very significant major part of it, 0:02:58.040 --> 0:03:00.880 and it had immediate devastating effect in Asia and the 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:04.720 tropical Pacific, and a lot of these are unfortunately really 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:07.400 glossed over when people talk about the year without a summer. 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:13.040 There were several major volcanic eruptions in the early eighteen teens. 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:17.200 One was Sufferrare on Saint Vincent Island in the Caribbean 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:21.200 in eighteen twelve. Mount Mayon and the Philippines erupted in 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:25.079 eighteen fourteen, and then there was an immense explosion from 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:28.359 Tambora which started on April fifth, eighteen fifteen, and went 0:03:28.400 --> 0:03:32.400 on for days, with the worst of the eruption really 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:35.760 getting going on the tenth. And in the memoir of 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:39.080 Sir Stamford, Raffles, the British Lieutenant governor of Java at 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:42.560 the time, quote, the first explosions were heard on this 0:03:42.640 --> 0:03:45.200 island in the evening of the fifth of April. They 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.600 were noticed in every quarter and continued at intervals until 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:52.080 the following day. The noise was in the first instance 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:56.520 almost universally attributed to distant cannon, so much so that 0:03:56.560 --> 0:03:59.119 a detachment of troops who were marched from Joke Jakarta 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:02.560 in the expectation that a neighboring post was attacked, and 0:04:02.640 --> 0:04:05.880 along the coast boats were in two instances dispatched in 0:04:05.960 --> 0:04:10.200 quest of a supposed ship in distress. On the following morning, however, 0:04:10.280 --> 0:04:13.040 a slight fall of ashes removed all doubt as to 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:15.200 the cause of the sound, and he goes on to 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:17.320 say that it sounded so close that they really all 0:04:17.360 --> 0:04:19.960 believed it was a volcano that was actually much closer 0:04:19.960 --> 0:04:25.839 to them than Tambora. When the eruption started, eyewitnesses on 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:30.440 the island of Zimbawa reported three extremely tall, very distinct 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:33.560 columns of flame that came up from the volcano's crater, 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:36.560 and then they kind of crashed into one another high 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:40.640 up above it, before cascading back down stones that were 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:44.359 on average the size of a walnut also rained down, 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:49.359 along with tons and tons of ash. Also falling in 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:52.600 the vicinity of the mountain were trees and even animals 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:55.520 that had been on the upper slopes, which were torn 0:04:55.600 --> 0:05:00.479 apart by the eruption. The eruption of Tambora case you 0:05:00.640 --> 0:05:04.919 could not surmise this from Tracy's description, was huge. It 0:05:05.040 --> 0:05:07.680 was much bigger and much deadlier than the far more 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:11.360 well known eruption of Krakatoa that happened almost seventy years later. 0:05:12.120 --> 0:05:15.200 People reported hearing it as far away as Sumatra, which 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:17.560 is more than a thousand miles away from where it 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:21.720 was happening. There was also so much ash in the 0:05:21.760 --> 0:05:25.839 air that it was, according to reports, dark for three 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:30.080 days for three hundred miles around the volcano. After the 0:05:30.200 --> 0:05:34.360 eruption peaked, the volcano itself also got a lot shorter. 0:05:34.400 --> 0:05:37.800 It lost almost a third of its pre eruption height, 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:41.640 dropping from four thousand, two hundred to two thousand, eight 0:05:41.720 --> 0:05:47.320 hundred meters. Not surprisingly, the island of Sumbawa was devastated. 0:05:47.839 --> 0:05:50.920 More than ten thousand people died in the eruption itself. 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:56.000 The entire island was covered in ash, and this ash 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:59.280 had an average depth of between fifty and sixty centimeters, 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:03.200 so between twenty and thirty inches of ash. The ash 0:06:03.320 --> 0:06:05.599 was deeper the closer you got to the volcano, and 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:09.679 so much of it fell that buildings collapsed under its weight, 0:06:10.200 --> 0:06:13.600 and a two thousand and four archaeological expedition found a 0:06:13.680 --> 0:06:17.359 village that was buried under an ash layer ten feet thick. 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:22.440 Ash spread to the north and northwest, blanketing the sea 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:26.599 and the neighboring islands. British vessels reported patches of ash 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:29.800 in the sea around Indonesia that was several feet deep 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:34.279 and had to be essentially plowed through. Two of Simbawa's 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:38.920 prinstoms were completely destroyed and their common languages became extinct, 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:43.159 and the influx of volcanic material into the ocean also 0:06:43.200 --> 0:06:45.919 spawned a tsunami that struck other parts of the island 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:48.920 as well as neighboring islands, so that people who had 0:06:48.920 --> 0:06:52.920 survived the initial eruption wound up being killed in the tsunami. Afterward, 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:58.039 most of the crops in the surrounding area were destroyed, and, 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:00.840 as is so often the case when such a massive 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:05.960 natural disaster, famine and disease spread and its wake, including 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:10.320 among livestock and wild animals. People became so hungry that 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:13.360 they resorted to eating their horses, which were working animals 0:07:13.400 --> 0:07:16.920 that were necessary for transportation and for work. And all 0:07:16.960 --> 0:07:19.880 of this wasn't limited just to the island of Simbawa. 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:23.640 People in neighboring islands starved to death as volcanic ash 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:28.280 killed their rice crops. There was a massive migration to 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:31.520 other islands, and some of those islands could not sustain 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:34.080 the needs of all of these newcomers that were causing 0:07:34.120 --> 0:07:37.840 their economies and their food supplies to collapse. And many 0:07:37.840 --> 0:07:40.560 of those islands were facing famines and epidemics of their 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:43.640 own in the wake of the volcano. Bali and Lombach 0:07:43.680 --> 0:07:47.560 were particularly hard hit. Estimates of the total death toll 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:51.920 in Indonesia really vary, but sources generally agree that it 0:07:52.000 --> 0:07:56.239 was at least one hundred seventeen thousand people who died 0:07:56.280 --> 0:07:59.880 in the eruption and its aftermath. It took more than 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:02.680 five years before crops could be harvested again. On the 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:07.720 most affected parts of Sumbawa, recovery was extremely slow. Two 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:11.080 government officials wrote that the princetoms of Sumbawa and Dampo 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:15.480 were quote beginning to recover in eighteen twenty four, so 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:19.400 we're talking about almost a decade later. Other Prinstoms were, 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:23.000 in their words still quote a desolate heap of rubble. 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:27.680 The whole thing had an extremely long lasting effect on 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:30.600 the island's ecology. You could probably even say that it 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:34.960 was permanently changed. And places ash made the ground were fertile, 0:08:35.120 --> 0:08:38.640 but it was also drier. So Bali and lomboch So 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:42.520 neighboring islands wound up with really bountiful rice harvests a 0:08:42.559 --> 0:08:44.840 few years later thanks to all the ash and the soil. 0:08:45.440 --> 0:08:48.600 But on Sumbawa, the volcano and the ash destroyed all 0:08:48.600 --> 0:08:52.920 the vegetation, and the streams and springs that the vegetation 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:56.920 had been sheltering consequently dried up, so while the soil 0:08:57.040 --> 0:09:00.319 was richer, it was also a lot drier. Sumbawa didn't 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:02.720 get quite the same benefit as some of the other 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:08.360 outlying islands did once it had started to recover. The 0:09:08.559 --> 0:09:13.120 dust from the ash spread around the world, caused brilliant sunsets, 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:15.320 and it also reaked havoc with the weather over the 0:09:15.360 --> 0:09:18.560 following months. In the US, dust in the air was 0:09:18.559 --> 0:09:22.480 reported in the Washington, d c. Daily National Intelligencer on 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:25.880 May first of eighteen sixteen, and in the Norfolk, Virginia 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:29.640 American Beacon on the ninth. The editor of the Boston 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:32.840 Columbia Sentinel remarked that the sun itself seemed dimmer on 0:09:32.920 --> 0:09:36.040 July fifteenth, which he thought was because of sun spots, 0:09:36.520 --> 0:09:38.760 and while there was a lot of sunspot activity, it 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:40.880 was almost certainly because of all of the ash in 0:09:40.920 --> 0:09:45.800 the atmosphere. So we are going to talk about exactly 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:48.920 what that ash caused in terms of the weather after 0:09:48.960 --> 0:10:01.600 a brief word from a sponsor, so to return to Tambora. 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:04.920 Before we talk about how this eruption affected the weather 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:07.359 in parts of the world, we have a couple of caveats. 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:11.720 One is that the measurement and record keeping related to 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:15.680 weather statistics have really improved dramatically in the years since 0:10:15.720 --> 0:10:18.199 all of this happened. Most of the places that we're 0:10:18.240 --> 0:10:21.840 talking about did not have any sort of methodical pattern 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:24.920 of observing the weather and writing it down, which is 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:27.280 something we pretty much take for granted today. So that 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:29.360 means a lot of the records that we have are 0:10:29.480 --> 0:10:33.920 erratic and subjective, but there is a ton of documentation 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:39.040 overall in the historical record, in the form of newspapers, letters, journals, diaries, 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:42.800 and other documents. So there's so much of it that 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:46.320 we know just from that part that this was a 0:10:46.360 --> 0:10:53.080 real event and not just somebody overreacting about a cold snap. Also, 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:56.720 we have a lot of documentation about eighteen sixteens weather 0:10:56.800 --> 0:11:00.640 in North America and Europe and parts of Asia. But 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:03.520 while it's pretty logical to conclude that the weather was 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:06.280 completely weird everywhere as a consequence of all of this 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:10.200 volcanic activity, we have much less in the way of 0:11:10.240 --> 0:11:14.120 actual records from Africa, South America, and Australia. So when 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:16.480 we walk through what we know, it is mostly from 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:21.319 North American, European and Asian points of view. In North America, 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:25.079 particularly on the east coast, stretching from the Carolinas all 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:28.320 the way up through what's now Ontario and Quebec, the 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:32.120 spring of eighteen sixteen was overall cooler and drier than normal, 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:36.040 although there were some big warm spells mixed in, Temperatures 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:39.559 kind of swung wildly from balmy to freezing and back again. 0:11:40.880 --> 0:11:45.440 Then the summer had three extreme cold spells in June, July, 0:11:45.600 --> 0:11:49.160 and August the first huge cold wave stretch. From June 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.959 fifth to June eleventh, Temperatures in New England dropped from 0:11:52.960 --> 0:11:55.960 the eighties to the forties in the wake of a thunderstorm, 0:11:56.280 --> 0:12:00.000 and that actually became the high for the next several days. 0:12:00.040 --> 0:12:03.280 Eighteen inches of snow was reported in Cabot, Vermont, on 0:12:03.320 --> 0:12:06.480 the eighth, and a hard frost that stretched well into 0:12:06.520 --> 0:12:09.280 the south on the eleventh killed most of the crops 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:12.400 that had managed to survive up until that point. People 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:15.640 started to talk about the real possibility of a famine. 0:12:16.200 --> 0:12:20.520 Within weeks, New England temperatures were really unseasonably hot, again, 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:24.960 breaking one hundred in parts of Massachusetts, which doesn't happen 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:27.920 all that often, especially not this early in the season. 0:12:28.520 --> 0:12:31.800 Another four day cold snap hit eastern North America starting 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:36.280 on July sixth. In this case, frosts killed the replanted crops, 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:39.400 although it was not as snowy this time around. Most 0:12:39.440 --> 0:12:41.199 of the snow reported in the US was in the 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:44.840 mountains of Vermont, but further north in Montreal, bodies of 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:48.200 water completely froze over with a layer of ice. This 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.760 snap also reached even farther south, causing cold weather and 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:55.319 frosts in places that had escaped in the June wave. 0:12:56.880 --> 0:12:59.959 The cold weather came back again on August twenty first, 0:13:00.160 --> 0:13:03.679 causing more snow in the Vermont Mountains, along with frosts 0:13:03.679 --> 0:13:06.720 as far south as North Carolina and as far west 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:11.559 as Kentucky and Ohio. Just as alarming at this point 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:14.400 was a drought which had affected much of the southern 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:17.720 and eastern US, and it's estimated that up to half 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:20.280 of the cotton crop in the South failed because of 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:24.800 this dry weather. Grain prices skyrocketed and the drought didn't 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:28.040 break until September, after the cold weather was over, only 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:30.200 to be about to start again because it was heading 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:33.840 into autumn. The price of flour rose from four dollars 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:36.880 a barrel to between eleven and twenty dollars per barrel, 0:13:37.440 --> 0:13:40.360 The wholesale price of wheat nearly doubled, and the price 0:13:40.360 --> 0:13:44.880 of virtually every food staple shot up. There was also 0:13:44.960 --> 0:13:48.320 a huge increase in migration of farmers from the Eastern 0:13:48.440 --> 0:13:51.640 United States into the West, as people hoped that they 0:13:51.679 --> 0:13:55.480 would find better growing conditions, and because the West really 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:58.840 hadn't seen the kind of unseasonable cold that the East 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:02.680 Coast had about twice as many people decided to move 0:14:02.800 --> 0:14:07.200 west that year, as was typical at that point. In 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:11.400 several states, including New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, 0:14:11.960 --> 0:14:14.560 people called for a ban on distillery because of the 0:14:14.640 --> 0:14:17.800 grain shortage. When people couldn't afford grain to feed their 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:21.760 livestock and their working animals, they ate the animals instead. 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:27.440 So that was North America's eighteen to sixteen summer. In Europe, 0:14:27.600 --> 0:14:31.880 the summer was similarly wintry, but it also seemed like 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:34.480 it got all the rain that North America had been missing. 0:14:35.160 --> 0:14:38.360 Western Europe was the most affected, but crops failed all 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:41.120 over the continent thanks to the fields being flooded and 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:45.600 later frozen. Crops that are sensitive to having too much water, 0:14:45.760 --> 0:14:48.560 like wine grapes, really suffered in their quality when they 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:52.680 managed to survive. Plus, all the incessant rain made things 0:14:52.760 --> 0:14:57.120 generally wet and moldy. Because horses were the main source 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:00.200 of transportation and grain became so much more expensi of 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:04.840 the cost of travel in Europe skyrocketed. Famine spread in 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:09.200 Switzerland and Ireland. In Switzerland, the government had to distribute 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:12.240 information about how to tell poisonous plants from ones that 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:15.000 were safe to eat as people try to scavenge what 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:17.640 they could from out in the woods or the wilds. 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:21.320 In Ireland, a typhus epidemic spread in the wake of 0:15:21.360 --> 0:15:24.640 the famine. The story that sticks in a lot of 0:15:24.640 --> 0:15:27.520 people's minds about how this played out in Europe is 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:31.000 that the infamous evening in which George Gordon, Lord Byron, 0:15:31.200 --> 0:15:34.520 proposed that all of his guests at his Lake Geneva 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:38.200 Villa write a story. That's the visit in which Mary 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:41.440 Shelley wound up writing Frankenstein. That all happened in the 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:45.920 middle of this cold, wretched summer, And also written during 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:50.880 this was Byron's poem Darkness, And that poem begins, I 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:53.880 had a dream which was not all a dream. The 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:57.320 bright sun was extinguished, and the stars did wander darkling 0:15:57.400 --> 0:16:01.240 in the eternal space Raylists and Athlas, and the icy 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:05.360 earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air. Morn 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:08.880 came and went and came and brought no day, and 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:12.400 men forgot their passions in the dread of this, their desolation, 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:15.760 and all hearts were chilled to a selfish prayer for 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:20.800 light in Asia. Moving on to the third big place 0:16:20.800 --> 0:16:24.280 that we have lots of information about the volcano disrupted 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:27.720 the monsoon cycle in India and Korea, so things were 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:29.720 dry when they were supposed to be wet, and then 0:16:29.920 --> 0:16:32.200 way wetter than they were supposed to be once the 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:36.120 rain actually arrived. This caused rice crops, which really rely 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:40.120 on that monsoon cycle, to fail all over. The change 0:16:40.160 --> 0:16:43.440 in the weather also affected which bacteria could thrive in 0:16:43.440 --> 0:16:47.040 the Bay of Bengal, and unfortunately, one species that did 0:16:47.120 --> 0:16:49.920 thrive was a new strain of cholera, which people had 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:54.560 less resistance too than previous strains. Bengal Kolera spread out 0:16:54.600 --> 0:16:57.359 of India to the rest of the world in eighteen seventeen, 0:16:57.760 --> 0:17:01.200 and the strain killed tens of millions of people. There's 0:17:01.200 --> 0:17:04.000 actually some debate in the scientific community about just how 0:17:04.080 --> 0:17:06.159 much of this shift had to do with the volcano 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:10.439 and Unon Province in southwestern China, crops failed in the 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:13.800 face of just a bitter bitter cold and a much 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:18.400 wetter season than normal, and the book Tambora, The Eruption 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:22.280 That Changed the World, author Gillen Darcy Wood connects this 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:25.920 and this massive crop failure in famine to the rise 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:29.359 of opium growth in Unon as farmers turned to it 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:31.840 in desperation is a way to try to just make 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:34.159 enough money to survive when the rest of their crops 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:38.720 had failed. A huge famine swept through southwest China and 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:42.359 it lasted for years. Neighboring parts of China had an 0:17:42.359 --> 0:17:45.760 influx of refugees, and much of the nation faced a 0:17:45.920 --> 0:17:50.040 serious social unrest. So before we talk about some of 0:17:50.040 --> 0:17:52.639 the theories at the time for what was going on, 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:55.400 let's have another pause for a word from a sponsor 0:17:56.200 --> 0:18:09.200 that sounds grand. So unsurprisingly, there were many many explanations 0:18:09.240 --> 0:18:11.000 at the time for what was going on and what 0:18:11.119 --> 0:18:14.879 was causing this just bizarre weather. These I actually start 0:18:14.960 --> 0:18:18.080 with a story about why the volcano erupted in the 0:18:18.200 --> 0:18:22.760 first place. The population of Simbabwe was largely Muslim, and 0:18:22.920 --> 0:18:26.400 there was a folk tale explaining the event, and that 0:18:26.520 --> 0:18:29.520 was that a prince had fed a devout Muslim a 0:18:29.680 --> 0:18:33.439 dog and then killed him, and the volcano's eruption was 0:18:33.480 --> 0:18:38.000 an act of divine retribution for that act. A range 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:40.680 of explanations for the weather cropped up in North America 0:18:40.800 --> 0:18:44.359 and Europe as well. A primary theory was sun spots. 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:47.000 As we mentioned briefly earlier, there were a number of 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:50.200 extremely large sunspots that year, some of which were visible 0:18:50.240 --> 0:18:53.679 to the unaided eye, and people thought these darker areas 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:56.439 of the sun were colder, which is true, and a 0:18:56.520 --> 0:19:00.120 colder sun meant colder weather. Not everyone was on board 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:02.480 with this idea, though, since the timing of the sun 0:19:02.520 --> 0:19:05.160 spots did not always match up with the coldest weather. 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:10.200 There's actually a lot of continued study and discussion about 0:19:10.240 --> 0:19:13.840 exactly how much sunspots can affect the Earth's weather and climate. 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:18.119 And it's partly because this all happens on such a 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:22.720 huge scale, and the sunspots cycle itself is so long 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:27.320 that it's almost impossible to isolate just sunspots from all 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:29.600 of the other stuff in the world that's going on 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:33.000 while the sun spot cycle is peaking. Yeah, you can't 0:19:33.000 --> 0:19:35.040 really turn off the sun to get a control group 0:19:35.080 --> 0:19:37.960 without it, Yeah, And you can't turn off the volcanoes 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:41.280 to study just the sun. Yeah. So I really tried 0:19:41.280 --> 0:19:43.600 to find a definitive answer of good sun spots I've 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:47.760 been and that there's not a definitive answer. Another theory 0:19:47.800 --> 0:19:49.919 at this time is that it had something to do 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:53.679 with ice in North America. Ice seemed to persist in 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:56.359 the Great Lakes for longer than normal, and a number 0:19:56.400 --> 0:19:59.800 of ships reported huge ice floes floating in the North Atlantic. 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:03.480 People thought that all of this ice was actually sucking 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:06.880 the heat out of the atmosphere. This is really more 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:09.600 of a cause and effect situation. There was more ice 0:20:09.800 --> 0:20:12.400 on the Great Lakes because it was colder than normal, 0:20:13.680 --> 0:20:15.800 But then there was more ice floating in the Northern 0:20:15.840 --> 0:20:20.880 Atlantic because this whole time actually caused a warming trend 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:24.000 over the poles, and so a lot of polar ice 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:27.400 broke up and floated away, so that it was more 0:20:27.440 --> 0:20:31.120 of a cause and effect situation than the ice sucking 0:20:31.119 --> 0:20:34.159 the heat out of the air. Also, a series of 0:20:34.160 --> 0:20:37.960 pretty large earthquakes had struck various points on the Earth 0:20:38.000 --> 0:20:41.840 in the eighteen teens, and people also blamed the weather 0:20:41.920 --> 0:20:45.080 on this. The idea was that the Earth's motion had 0:20:45.200 --> 0:20:49.919 somehow caused some kind of fluid equilibrium between the surface 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:52.879 of the Earth and the atmosphere, and that until something 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:57.200 broke that equilibrium, that there would not be enough warmth 0:20:57.280 --> 0:21:02.680 available for crops to grow. Other scapegoats that were named 0:21:02.680 --> 0:21:05.600 as the cause of all of these problems, Benjamin Franklin's 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:09.879 lightning rods, they were stealing electricity and disrupting the weather, 0:21:09.920 --> 0:21:12.760 because you know, he'd invented them in the mid seventeen 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:16.360 hundreds and they'd become more commonplace since then. So clearly, 0:21:16.480 --> 0:21:19.080 since that happened before the weather, it must have caused 0:21:19.080 --> 0:21:23.040 this terrible weather. That there's so many explanations that logic 0:21:23.200 --> 0:21:28.520 is sound yet there. I mean, we still see this 0:21:28.600 --> 0:21:31.800 today when people don't totally understand something, and they'll feel 0:21:31.800 --> 0:21:34.639 like that because one thing happened before another thing, that 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:38.560 the first thing caused the second thing, And it's often 0:21:38.640 --> 0:21:42.560 not true at all, right, It's that like chronological causality 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:49.320 attribution that's not always valid. So the prevailing theory today 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:53.480 is that the volcanic activity, including that from Tambora and 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:55.760 the other eruptions that were mentioned at the top of 0:21:55.800 --> 0:21:58.520 the show, was at least one of the primary contributors. 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:00.720 And this was actually something that people did discuss a 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:02.520 little bit at the time. It was certainly not a 0:22:02.520 --> 0:22:04.960 widespread theory, but there were people who were like, you know, 0:22:05.040 --> 0:22:07.639 maybe all this ash in the atmosphere, which is from 0:22:07.640 --> 0:22:11.280 a volcano, is making it colder. People are pretty smart 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:16.240 that way. However, eighteen sixteen was not the only year 0:22:16.600 --> 0:22:20.960 in that time period that had weird weather. In general, 0:22:21.040 --> 0:22:23.480 it was colder than normal in a lot of places 0:22:23.560 --> 0:22:26.199 from eighteen twelve to eighteen seventeen, to the point that 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:30.400 people took notice, and by studying things like ice cores 0:22:30.440 --> 0:22:34.200 and tree rings and that kind of long term documentation 0:22:34.320 --> 0:22:38.200 that the earth leaves of itself, scientists know that this 0:22:38.359 --> 0:22:41.080 was not really just a little five year window of 0:22:41.080 --> 0:22:44.040 a cold snap. The eighteen hundred spell at the end 0:22:44.119 --> 0:22:46.960 of a relative cool snap that lasted around the world 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:51.240 for almost five hundred years, starting in fourteen hundred and 0:22:51.400 --> 0:22:55.760 ending in around eighteen sixty. At least in the US, 0:22:56.160 --> 0:22:58.680 the year without a summer prompted people to start making 0:22:58.720 --> 0:23:03.480 more routine observances and recordings of weather conditions. The Commissioner 0:23:03.520 --> 0:23:06.960 General of the Land Office, Josiah Meiggs, sent out a 0:23:06.960 --> 0:23:09.880 memo to all of his registers at twenty different land 0:23:09.880 --> 0:23:13.199 offices instructing them to make and record a number of 0:23:13.200 --> 0:23:17.480 observations about everything from the weather to animal migrations. The 0:23:17.520 --> 0:23:20.879 military also started making and recording weather observations at the 0:23:20.920 --> 0:23:23.840 direction of Joseph Lovell, the Surgeon General of the Army, 0:23:24.440 --> 0:23:27.280 and the Patent Office and the Smithsonian Institution got in 0:23:27.320 --> 0:23:30.520 on the action as well, and consequently, the first published 0:23:30.560 --> 0:23:33.760 weather forecasts came out in the US in eighteen forty nine. 0:23:34.280 --> 0:23:36.960 So when I started researching this episode, I kind of 0:23:37.000 --> 0:23:39.000 expected it to be a little bit like The Long 0:23:39.040 --> 0:23:43.000 Winter Part two. So we talked about the Long Winter, 0:23:43.080 --> 0:23:47.359 which Lara Engels Wilder wrote about last time about this 0:23:47.440 --> 0:23:50.320 time of year, and that was the weather was really cold, 0:23:50.359 --> 0:23:55.160 things were really hard, things were tough, but overall everything 0:23:55.200 --> 0:23:57.560 worked out okay for the most part, and I sort 0:23:57.560 --> 0:23:59.800 of thought this was going to be similar to that. 0:24:02.520 --> 0:24:06.600 I was not expecting all of the famines and deaths 0:24:06.600 --> 0:24:10.119 and the extreme scale of how deadly the volcano was. 0:24:10.320 --> 0:24:13.679 The a lot of like a lot of people who 0:24:13.760 --> 0:24:16.920 have written to suggest the topic or other things that 0:24:17.000 --> 0:24:18.600 I've seen about it, kind of go, this was a 0:24:18.680 --> 0:24:22.359 year that had terrible weather, a volcano caused it, and 0:24:22.440 --> 0:24:25.200 the that's sort of all that said about the volcano, 0:24:25.359 --> 0:24:28.080 as though the volcano was on an island that was 0:24:28.119 --> 0:24:34.600 totally uninhabited, right, and that is not the case at all. 0:24:35.359 --> 0:24:39.080