Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I am Tracy and I'm Holly Frying. So perhaps you
Speaker 1: have heard of Mary Robinett Kal maybe you're a listener
Speaker 1: to this podcast. She has written, among other things, a
Speaker 1: series of novels that are known as The Glamorous Histories.
Speaker 1: And these are basically Jane Austen novels with magic. So
Speaker 1: if that sounds delightful to you and you have not
Speaker 1: read them, you will probably be delighted because they are
Speaker 1: pretty charming and touching and funny. And the third one
Speaker 1: was some of my most recent airplane reading while I
Speaker 1: was on a flight, and that book is called Without
Speaker 1: a Summer. It's said in eighteen sixteen, And in addition
Speaker 1: to several running mentions of past podcast subjects the Luddites,
Speaker 1: there's ongoing this cussion about about whether that year's unseasonably
Speaker 1: cold weather is caused by magic. Basically, so this is
Speaker 1: not unseasonably cold like chillier than normal. It's unseasonably cold
Speaker 1: like it's snowing in July and all of the crops
Speaker 1: have frozen in the ground. So in spite of the
Speaker 1: similarities and their names. I was so absorbed in this
Speaker 1: book that it wasn't until the very end that I
Speaker 1: made the connection that this unseasonably called fictional setting is
Speaker 1: the same as the real world event the Year Without
Speaker 1: a Summer, which is also a listener request from listener Cecile.
Speaker 1: So Cecil, you can thank Mary Robin at Koal for
Speaker 1: for bumping this to the top of the list, because
Speaker 1: after we landed, I was like, I want to learn
Speaker 1: more about that and what really happened. So this story
Speaker 1: actually starts with a volcano. And the volcano, which was
Speaker 1: Tambora on the island of Simbawa, Indonesia, was probably not
Speaker 1: the only factor in eighteen sixteen of bizarre weather, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that a little bit more later, but
Speaker 1: it was definitely a very significant major part of it,
Speaker 1: and it had immediate devastating effects in Asia and the
Speaker 1: tropical Pacific, and a lot of these are unfortunately really
Speaker 1: glossed over when people talk about the Year Without a Summer.
Speaker 1: There were several major volcanic eruptions in the early eighteen teens.
Speaker 1: One was suffer Air on St. Vincent Island in the
Speaker 1: Caribbean in eighteen twelve. Mount Mayon and the Philippines erupted
Speaker 1: in eighteen fourteen. And then there was an immense explosion
Speaker 1: from Tambora which started on April five, eighteen fifteen, and
Speaker 1: went on for days, with the worst of the eruption
Speaker 1: really getting going on the tenth. And in the memoir
Speaker 1: of Sir Stamford Raffles, the British Lieutenant Governor of Java
Speaker 1: at the time, quote, the first explosions were heard on
Speaker 1: this island in the evening of the fifth of April.
Speaker 1: They were noticed in every quarter and continued at intervals
Speaker 1: until the following day. The noise was in the first
Speaker 1: instance almost universally attributed to distant cannon, so much so
Speaker 1: that a attachment of troops were marched from Joke, Jakarta,
Speaker 1: in the expectation that a neighboring post was attacked, and
Speaker 1: along the coast boats were in two instances dispatched in
Speaker 1: quest of a supposed ship in distress. On the following morning, however,
Speaker 1: a slight fall of ashes removed all doubt as to
Speaker 1: the cause of the sound, and he goes on to
Speaker 1: say that it sounded so close that they really all
Speaker 1: believed it was a volcano. That was actually much closer
Speaker 1: to them than Tambora. When the eruptions started, eyewitnesses on
Speaker 1: the island of Zimbabwa reported three extremely tall, very distinct
Speaker 1: columns of flame that came up from the volcanoes crater,
Speaker 1: and then they kind of crashed into one another high
Speaker 1: up above it before cascading back down. Stones that were
Speaker 1: on average the size of a walnut also rained down,
Speaker 1: along with tons and tons of ash. Also falling in
Speaker 1: the vicinity of the mountain were trees and even animals
Speaker 1: that had been on the upper slopes, which were torn
Speaker 1: apart by the eruption. The eruption of Tambora, in case
Speaker 1: you could not surmise this from Tracy's description, was huge.
Speaker 1: It was much bigger and much deadlier than the far
Speaker 1: more well known eruption of Krakatoa that happened almost seventy
Speaker 1: years later. People reported hearing it as far away as Sumatra,
Speaker 1: which is more than a thousand miles away from where
Speaker 1: it was happening. There was also so much ash in
Speaker 1: the air that it, was, according to reports, dark for
Speaker 1: three days or three hundred miles around the volcano. After
Speaker 1: the eruption peaked, the volcano itself also got a lot shorter.
Speaker 1: It lost almost a third of its pre eruption height,
Speaker 1: dropping from four thousand, two hundred to two thousand, eight
Speaker 1: hundred meters. Not Surprisingly, the island of Simbabwa was devastated.
Speaker 1: More than ten tho Bill died in the eruption itself.
Speaker 1: The entire island was covered in ash, and this ash
Speaker 1: had an average depth of between fifty and sixty centimeters,
Speaker 1: so between twenty and thirty of ash. The ash was
Speaker 1: deeper the closer you got to the volcano, and so
Speaker 1: much of it fell that buildings collapsed under its weight,
Speaker 1: and a two thousand four archaeological expedition found a village
Speaker 1: that was buried under an ash layer ten feet thick.
Speaker 1: Ash spread to the north and northwest, blanketing the sea
Speaker 1: and the neighboring islands. British vessels reported patches of ash
Speaker 1: in the sea around Indonesia that was several feet deep
Speaker 1: and had to be essentially plowed through. Two of Zimbabwa's
Speaker 1: princedoms were completely destroyed and their common languages became extinct,
Speaker 1: and the influx of volcanic material into the ocean also
Speaker 1: spawned a tsunami that struck other parts of the island
Speaker 1: as well as neighboring islands, so that people who had
Speaker 1: survived the initial eruption wound up being killed in the tsunami. Afterward,
Speaker 1: most of the crops in the surrounding area were destroyed,
Speaker 1: and as is so often the case when there's such
Speaker 1: a massive natural disaster, famine and disease spread and its wake,
Speaker 1: including among livestock and wild animals. People became so hungry
Speaker 1: that they resorted to eating their horses, which were working
Speaker 1: animals that were necessary for transportation and for work. And
Speaker 1: all of this wasn't limited just to the island of Sumbawa.
Speaker 1: People in neighboring islands starved to death as volcanic ash
Speaker 1: killed their rice crops. There was a massive migration to
Speaker 1: other islands, and some of those islands could not sustain
Speaker 1: the needs of all of these newcomers that were causing
Speaker 1: their economies and their food supplies to collapse, and many
Speaker 1: of those islands were facing famines and epidemics of their
Speaker 1: own in the wake of the volcano. Bali and Lombach
Speaker 1: were particularly hard hit. Estimates of the total death toll
Speaker 1: in Indonesia are really very but sources generally agree that
Speaker 1: it was at least one hundred seventeen thousand people who
Speaker 1: died in the eruption and it's it's aftermath. It took
Speaker 1: more than five years before crops could be harvested again.
Speaker 1: On the most affected parts of Sumbawa, recovery was extremely
Speaker 1: slow to Government officials wrote that the princedoms of Sumbawa
Speaker 1: and Dambo were quote beginning to recover in eighteen twenty four,
Speaker 1: so we're talking about almost a decade later. Other princedoms were,
Speaker 1: in their words, still quote a desolate heap of rubble.
Speaker 1: The whole thing had an extremely long lasting effect on
Speaker 1: the island's ecology. You could probably even say that it
Speaker 1: was permanently changed in places. Ash made the ground more fertile,
Speaker 1: but it was also drier, So Bali and Lombox so
Speaker 1: neighboring islands wound up with really bounciful rice harvests a
Speaker 1: few years later, thanks to all the ash and the soil.
Speaker 1: But on Sumbawa, the volcano in the ash destroyed all
Speaker 1: the veted tatian, and the streams and springs that the
Speaker 1: vegetation had been sheltering consequently dried up. So While the
Speaker 1: soil was richer, it was also a lot drier, so
Speaker 1: why it didn't get quite the same benefit as some
Speaker 1: of the other outlying islands did once it had started
Speaker 1: to recover. The dust from the ash spread around the world,
Speaker 1: caused brilliant sunsets, and it also reaked havoc with the
Speaker 1: weather over the following months. In the US, dust in
Speaker 1: the air was reported in the Washington, d c. Daily
Speaker 1: National Intelligencer on May one, eighteen sixteen, and in the Norfolk,
Speaker 1: Virginia American Beacon on the ninth. The editor of the
Speaker 1: Boston Columbia Sentinel remarked that the sun itself seemed dimmer
Speaker 1: on July fift which he thought was because of sun spots,
Speaker 1: And while there was a lot of sun spot activity,
Speaker 1: it was almost certainly because of all of the ash
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere. So we're going to talk about exactly
Speaker 1: what that ash caused in terms of the weather after
Speaker 1: a brief word from a sponsor, and now let's get
Speaker 1: back to the slightly less peppy discussion of the year
Speaker 1: without a summer, So to return to Tambora before we
Speaker 1: talk about how this eruption affected the weather in parts
Speaker 1: of the world. We have a couple of caveats. One
Speaker 1: is that the measurement and record keeping related to weather
Speaker 1: statistics have really improved dramatically in the years since all
Speaker 1: of this happened. Most of the places that we're talking
Speaker 1: about did not have any sort of methodical pattern of
Speaker 1: observing the weather and writing it down, which is something
Speaker 1: we pretty much take for granted today. So that means
Speaker 1: a lot of the records that we have are erratic
Speaker 1: and subjective. But there is a ton of documentation overall
Speaker 1: in the historical record, in the form of newspapers, letters, journals, diaries,
Speaker 1: and other documents. So there's so much of it that
Speaker 1: we know just from that part uh that this was
Speaker 1: a real event and not just somebody overreacting about a
Speaker 1: cul snap. Also, we have a lot of documentation about
Speaker 1: eighteen sixteens, whether in North America and Europe and parts
Speaker 1: of Asia. But while it's pretty logical to conclude that
Speaker 1: the weather was completely weird everywhere as a consequence of
Speaker 1: all of this volcanic activity, we have much less in
Speaker 1: the way of actual records from Africa, South America and Australia.
Speaker 1: So when we walk through what we know, it is
Speaker 1: mostly from North American, European and Asian points of view.
Speaker 1: In North America, particularly on the east coast, stretching from
Speaker 1: the Carolinas all the way up through what's now Ontario
Speaker 1: and Quebec, the spring of eighteen sixteen was overall cooler
Speaker 1: and drier than normal, although there were some big warm
Speaker 1: spells mixed in. Temperatures kind of swung wildly from balmy
Speaker 1: to freezing and back again. Then the summer had three
Speaker 1: extreme cold spells in June, July, and August. The first
Speaker 1: huge cold wave stretch from June five to June eleven.
Speaker 1: Temperatures in New England dropped from the eighties to the
Speaker 1: forties in the wake of a thunderstorm, and that actually
Speaker 1: became the high for the next several days. Eighteen inches
Speaker 1: of snow was reported in Cabot, Vermont on the eighth,
Speaker 1: and a hard frost that stretched well into the south
Speaker 1: on the eleventh killed most of the crops that had
Speaker 1: managed to survive up until that point. People started to
Speaker 1: talk about the real possibility of a famine. Within weeks,
Speaker 1: New England temperatures were really unseasonably hot again, breaking one
Speaker 1: hundred in parts of Massachusetts, which doesn't happen all that often,
Speaker 1: especially not this early in the season. Another four day
Speaker 1: cold snap hit eastern North America starting on July six.
Speaker 1: In this case, frosts killed the replanted crops, although it
Speaker 1: was not as snowy this time around. Most of the
Speaker 1: snow reported in the U s was in the mountains
Speaker 1: of Vermont, but further north in Montreal, bodies of water
Speaker 1: completely froze over with a layer of ice. This snap
Speaker 1: also reached even farther south was in cold weather and
Speaker 1: frosts in places that had escaped in the June wave.
Speaker 1: The cold weather came back again on August one, causing
Speaker 1: more snow in the Vermont Mountains, along with frosts as
Speaker 1: far south as North Carolina and as far west as
Speaker 1: Kentucky and Ohio. Just as alarming at this point was
Speaker 1: a drought which had affected much of the southern and
Speaker 1: eastern US, and it's estimated that up to half of
Speaker 1: the cotton crop in the south failed because of this
Speaker 1: dry weather. Grain prices skyrocketed and the drought didn't break
Speaker 1: until September, after the cold weather was over, only to
Speaker 1: be about to start again. Because it was heading into autumn.
Speaker 1: The price of flour rose from four dollars a barrel
Speaker 1: to between eleven and twenty dollars per barrel. The wholesale
Speaker 1: price of wheat nearly doubled, and the price of virtually
Speaker 1: every food staple shot up. There was also a huge
Speaker 1: increase in migration of farmers from the Eastern United States
Speaker 1: into the West, as people hoped that they would find
Speaker 1: better growing conditions and because the West really hadn't seen
Speaker 1: the kind of unseasonable cold that the East Coast had.
Speaker 1: About twice as many people decided to move west that year,
Speaker 1: as was typical at that point. In several states, including
Speaker 1: New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, people called for
Speaker 1: a ban on distillery because of the grain shortage. When
Speaker 1: people couldn't afford grain to feed their livestock and they're
Speaker 1: working animals, they ate the animals instead. So that was
Speaker 1: North America's eighteen sixteen summer. In Europe, the summer was
Speaker 1: similarly wintry, but it also seemed like it got all
Speaker 1: the rain that North America had been missing. Western Europe
Speaker 1: was the most affected, but crops failed all over the
Speaker 1: continent thanks to the fields being flooded and later frozen.
Speaker 1: Crops that are sensitive to having too much water. Like wine,
Speaker 1: grapes really suffered in their quality when they managed to survive. Plus,
Speaker 1: all the incessant rain made things generally wet and moldy.
Speaker 1: Because horses were the main source of transportation and grain
Speaker 1: became so much more expensive, the cost of travel in
Speaker 1: Europe skyrocketed. Famine spread in Switzerland and Ireland. In Switzerland,
Speaker 1: the government had to distribute information about how to tell
Speaker 1: poisonous plants from ones that were safe to eat as
Speaker 1: people try to scavenge what they could from out in
Speaker 1: the woods or the wilds. In Ireland, a typhus epidemic
Speaker 1: spread in the wake of the famine. The story that
Speaker 1: sticks in a lot of people's minds about how this
Speaker 1: played out in Europe is that the infamous evening in
Speaker 1: which George Gordon Lord Byron proposed that all of his
Speaker 1: guests at his Lake Geneva villa write a story. That's
Speaker 1: the visit in which Mary Shelley wound up writing Frankenstein.
Speaker 1: That all happened in the middle of this cold, wretched summer,
Speaker 1: and also written during this uh was Byron's poem Darkness,
Speaker 1: and that poem begins. I had a dream which was
Speaker 1: not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished, and
Speaker 1: the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space, rayless
Speaker 1: and pathless, and the icy earth swung blind and blackening
Speaker 1: in the moonless air. Morn came and went and came
Speaker 1: and brought no day, and men forgot their passions in
Speaker 1: the dread of this, their desolation, and all hearts were
Speaker 1: chilled to a selfish prayer for light in Asia. Moving
Speaker 1: on to the third big place that we have lots
Speaker 1: of information about, the volcano disrupted the monsoon cycle in
Speaker 1: India and Korea, so things were dry when they were
Speaker 1: supposed to be wet, and then way wetter than they
Speaker 1: were supposed to be once the rain actually arrived. This
Speaker 1: caused rice crops, which really rely on that monsoon cycle,
Speaker 1: to fail all over. The change in the weather also
Speaker 1: affected which bacteria could thrive in the Bay of Bengal,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, one species that did thrive was a new
Speaker 1: strain of cholera, which people had less resistance too than
Speaker 1: previous strains. Bengal Colora spread out of India to the
Speaker 1: rest of the world in eighteen seventeen, and the strain
Speaker 1: killed tens of millions of people. There's actually some debate
Speaker 1: in the scientific community about just how much of this
Speaker 1: shift had to do with the volcano and Unon province
Speaker 1: in southwestern China, crops failed in the face of just
Speaker 1: a bitter bitter cold and a much wetter season than normal,
Speaker 1: and the book Tambora, The Eruption That Changed the World,
Speaker 1: author Gillan Darcy would connects this and this massive crop
Speaker 1: failure and famine to the rise of opium growth in
Speaker 1: Union as farmers turned to it in desperation is a
Speaker 1: way to try to just make enough money to survive
Speaker 1: when the rest of their crops had failed. A huge
Speaker 1: famine swept through southwest China and it lasted for years.
Speaker 1: Neighboring parts of China had an influx of refugees, and
Speaker 1: much of the nation faced a serious social unrest. So
Speaker 1: before we talk about some of the theories at the
Speaker 1: time for what was going on, let's have another pause
Speaker 1: for a word from a sponsor, and now back to
Speaker 1: the year without a summer. So, unsurprisingly, there were many
Speaker 1: many explanations at the time for what was going on
Speaker 1: and what was causing this just bizarre weather. These actually
Speaker 1: start with a story about why the volcano erupted in
Speaker 1: the first place. The population of Zimbabwe was largely Muslim,
Speaker 1: and there was a folk tale explaining the event, and
Speaker 1: that was that a prince had fed a devout Muslim
Speaker 1: a dog and then killed him, and the volcanoes eruption
Speaker 1: was an act of divine retribution for that act. A
Speaker 1: range of explanations for the weather cropped up in North
Speaker 1: America and Europe as well. A primary theory was sun spots.
Speaker 1: As we mentioned briefly earlier, there were a number of
Speaker 1: extremely large sun spots that year, some of which were
Speaker 1: visible to the unaided eye, and people thought these darker
Speaker 1: areas of the sun were colder, which is true, and
Speaker 1: a colder sun meant colder weather. Not everyone was on
Speaker 1: board with this idea, though, since the timing of the
Speaker 1: sun spots did not always match up with the coldest weather.
Speaker 1: There's actually a lot of continued study and discussion about
Speaker 1: exactly how much sun spots can affect the Earth's weather
Speaker 1: and climate. Uh And it's partly because this all happens
Speaker 1: on such a huge scale, and the sun spots cycle
Speaker 1: itself is so long that it's almost impossible to isolate
Speaker 1: just sun spots from all of the other stuff in
Speaker 1: the world that's going on while the sun spots cycle
Speaker 1: is peaking. Yeah, you can't really turn off the sun
Speaker 1: to get a control group without it. Yeah, And you
Speaker 1: can't turn off the volcanoes to study just the sun.
Speaker 1: It's so I really tried to find a definitive answer
Speaker 1: of good sun spots I've been and that there's not
Speaker 1: a definitive answer. Another theory at this time is that
Speaker 1: it had something to do with ice in North America.
Speaker 1: I seem to persist in the Great Lakes for longer
Speaker 1: than normal, and a number of ships for poorted huge
Speaker 1: ice floes floating in the North Atlantic. People thought that
Speaker 1: all of this ice was actually sucking the heat out
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere. This is really more of a cause
Speaker 1: and effects situation. There was more ice on the Great
Speaker 1: Lakes because it was colder than normal, uh, But then
Speaker 1: there was more ice floating in the Northern Atlantic because
Speaker 1: this whole time actually caused a warming uh trend over
Speaker 1: the poles, and so a lot of polar ice broke
Speaker 1: up and floated away, so that it was more of
Speaker 1: a cause and effects situation than the ice sucking the
Speaker 1: heat out of the air. Also, a series of pretty
Speaker 1: large earthquakes had struck various points on the Earth in
Speaker 1: the eighteen teens, and people also blamed the weather on this.
Speaker 1: The idea was that the Earth's motion had somehow caused
Speaker 1: some kind of fluid equilibrium between the surface of the
Speaker 1: Earth and the atmosphere, and that until something broke that equilibrium,
Speaker 1: that there would not be enough war available for crops
Speaker 1: to grow. Other scapegoats that were named as the cause
Speaker 1: of all of these problems Benjamin Franklin's lightning rods. They
Speaker 1: were stealing electricity and disrupting the weather, because you know,
Speaker 1: he did invented them in the mid seventeen hundreds, and
Speaker 1: they'd become more commonplace since then. So clearly, since that
Speaker 1: happened before the weather, it must have caused this terrible weather.
Speaker 1: There's so many explanations sound yet there. I mean, we
Speaker 1: still see this today when people don't totally understand something,
Speaker 1: and they'll feel like that because one thing happened before
Speaker 1: another thing, that the first thing caused the second thing,
Speaker 1: and it's often not true at all, Right, It's that
Speaker 1: like chronological causality attribution that's not not always valid. So
Speaker 1: the prevailing theory today is that the volcanic activity, including
Speaker 1: that from Tambora and the other eruptions that were mentioned
Speaker 1: at the top of the show, was it lea one
Speaker 1: of the primary contributors. And this was actually something that
Speaker 1: people did discuss a little bit at the time. It
Speaker 1: was certainly not a widespread theory, but there were people
Speaker 1: who were like, you know, maybe all this ash in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, which is from a volcano is making it colder.
Speaker 1: Like people are pretty smart that way. Um. However, eighteen
Speaker 1: sixteen was not the only year in that time period
Speaker 1: that had weird weather. In general, it was colder than
Speaker 1: normal in a lot of places from eighteen twelve to
Speaker 1: eighteen seventeen, to the point that people took notice, and
Speaker 1: by studying things like ice cores and tree rings and
Speaker 1: that kind of long term documentation that the earth leaves
Speaker 1: of itself, scientists know that this was not really just
Speaker 1: a little five year window of a cold snap. The
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred spell at the end of a relative cool
Speaker 1: snap that lasted around the world for almost five hundred years,
Speaker 1: starting in fourteen hundred and ending in around eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: at least in the US. The year without US Summer
Speaker 1: prompted people to start making more routine observances and recordings
Speaker 1: of weather conditions. The Commissioner General of the Land Office,
Speaker 1: Josiah Meggs, sent out a memo to all of his
Speaker 1: registers at twenty different land offices instructing them to make
Speaker 1: and record a number of observations about everything from the
Speaker 1: weather to animal migrations. The military also started making and
Speaker 1: recording weather observations at the direction of Joseph Lovell, the
Speaker 1: Surgeon General of the Army, and the Patent Office and
Speaker 1: the Smithsonian Institution got in on the action as well,
Speaker 1: and consequently, the first published weather forecasts came out in
Speaker 1: the US in eighteen forty nine. So when I started
Speaker 1: researching this episode, I kind of expected it to be
Speaker 1: a little bit like The Long Winter Part two. So
Speaker 1: we talked about the Long Winter, which Laura Angeles Wilder
Speaker 1: wrote about last time about this time of year, and
Speaker 1: that was the weather was really cold, things were really hard. Uh,
Speaker 1: things were tough, but overall everything worked out okay for
Speaker 1: the most part. And I sort of thought this was
Speaker 1: going to be similar to that. Uh. I was not
Speaker 1: expecting all of the famines and deaths and the extreme
Speaker 1: scale of how deadly the volcano was a lot of um.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of people who have written to suggest
Speaker 1: the topic or other things that I've seen about it,
Speaker 1: kind of go this was a year that had terrible weather,
Speaker 1: a volcano caused it, and the that's sort of all
Speaker 1: that said about the volcano, as though the volcano was
Speaker 1: on an island that was totally uninhabited, right, uh, and
Speaker 1: that is not the case at all. This episode gives
Speaker 1: me um flashbacks to when I was a kid in
Speaker 1: Mount Saint Helen's erupted because I lived in Washington State
Speaker 1: at the time, so I am very familiar with being
Speaker 1: covered with ash. Yeah, I've never lived near an active volcano,
Speaker 1: so I have not had that experience. Those are wild times.
Speaker 1: I remember my biggest concern, and again I was a
Speaker 1: child at the time, so my biggest concern was that
Speaker 1: all the animals have been killed. I was really upset
Speaker 1: about the animals that may have lost our lives, even
Speaker 1: though probably most of them fled before the activity actually started.
Speaker 1: I'm sure some still lost our lives, but that was
Speaker 1: my big focus as a child. I did not care
Speaker 1: that there was crap all over everything we owned and
Speaker 1: like a half inch of ash sitting everywhere. I was like,
Speaker 1: what about the deer? I was really that was my focus? Wow.
Speaker 1: So uh, I have some listener mail that is cheerier
Speaker 1: than this episode. I actually actually have two pieces. This
Speaker 1: is we are recording this episode as literally one of
Speaker 1: the last things before for the holidays, and it's gonna
Speaker 1: be a while before it's my turn for listener mails.
Speaker 1: So I'm doubling up today so that things don't get
Speaker 1: overlooked later on. Uh. They are both about our episode
Speaker 1: about the Gnomes Theorem run. And this person was from Karen.
Speaker 1: Karen says, I listened to your podcasts during the hundreds
Speaker 1: of hours literally that I spend on the trails training
Speaker 1: my long distance dog team. I am not making that up.
Speaker 1: I love that me too. Imagine my delight today to
Speaker 1: queue up your Wednesday podcast and find it on a
Speaker 1: subject near and dear to my heart, the Serum run. See.
Speaker 1: I have competed in the Iditarod Trail sled dog race
Speaker 1: eleven times. I have run dogs through Nanana, up the
Speaker 1: Yukon River, through Nulatto, across the very intimidating Norton Sound
Speaker 1: and into Gnome. Each of my pure bred Siberian Huskies
Speaker 1: can trace their roots back to dogs on Sappala's Serum
Speaker 1: run team, which was Togo, who we talked about in
Speaker 1: the episode. I just wanted to let you know that
Speaker 1: I thought you did a very excellent job of covering
Speaker 1: the subject. The pronunciations you were worried about were spot on,
Speaker 1: and you did a more accurate job with the subject
Speaker 1: than about anyone I've heard. Well done. Oh and I
Speaker 1: wanted to say that you are right minus fifty is
Speaker 1: ridiculously cold, and sled dogs are indeed amazing, the most
Speaker 1: amazing creatures on the planet if you ask me. I've
Speaker 1: running dogs for over twenty years and they still amazed
Speaker 1: me every day. Sincerely, Karen, and then I'm going to
Speaker 1: read another one. This one is from Marie, and Marie says,
Speaker 1: it was positively delightful to see some Alaskan history pop
Speaker 1: up in my podcast this morning. Even if it isn't
Speaker 1: an event I missed in history class, it was still
Speaker 1: an interesting listen. I won't lie. Part of the fund
Speaker 1: was listening to you both try really hard to say
Speaker 1: incredibly difficult Alaskan words correctly. I'm not surprised you could
Speaker 1: not find any pronunciation guides online. I am a lifelong Alaskan.
Speaker 1: My father was born in Anchorage before Alaska became a state,
Speaker 1: and wonder sometimes if the difficult names are purposeful to
Speaker 1: point out who uh, to point out those who have
Speaker 1: not lived here. I wanted to say thank you for
Speaker 1: talking about how important dogs and dogs letting are to
Speaker 1: the history of Alaska and its current culture. So many
Speaker 1: outside the state it is difficult to comprehend the vastness
Speaker 1: and sheer impassibility of a lot of the terrain, particularly
Speaker 1: north of the Bricks Range. To give you an idea
Speaker 1: of the distances involved, Nome is just over five hundred
Speaker 1: air miles from Anchorage. That is roughly the same distance
Speaker 1: from as from Atlanta, Georgia to Pittsburgh, Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: And Chicago. I say air miles because that is the
Speaker 1: most common way to get to know It is not
Speaker 1: connected to the Alaska Highway system and does not have
Speaker 1: a ferry service. The Iditarod Race, which you reference in
Speaker 1: the podcast, is about a thousand miles, give or take
Speaker 1: a few dozen, depending on checkpoint locations. Even if this
Speaker 1: were an actual highway, it would be the equivalent of
Speaker 1: driving from Montreal, Canada to Atlanta Georgia. That's about twenty
Speaker 1: one hours of driving, according to travel math dot com.
Speaker 1: I do want to say a word of caution that
Speaker 1: I hope is out to your listeners. Sled dogs are
Speaker 1: amazing creatures and incredible athletes. They are bread to work
Speaker 1: hard in cold weather, have remarkable endurance, and the ability
Speaker 1: to persevere in circumstances that most animals would block out.
Speaker 1: These same qualities mean that they are not always suited
Speaker 1: to be pets. While many breeds do make good pets,
Speaker 1: it is in important with any working breed of dog
Speaker 1: to consider the traits that make them special also make
Speaker 1: them challenging. A dog bread for cold weather is not
Speaker 1: as well suited to a hot climate. Dog spread to
Speaker 1: run long distances can become hyperactive when you confined to
Speaker 1: a yard. As amazing as these animals are, please consider
Speaker 1: carefully before bringing one into your home. Not every house
Speaker 1: or family is suited to an animal that is the
Speaker 1: canine equivalent of a an Olympic athlete. Thanks for your
Speaker 1: knowledge and keep up the good work. Marie. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Karen and Marie. I love both of those
Speaker 1: email an I love them both so much too, and
Speaker 1: I do want to have kind of a full disclosure.
Speaker 1: They both said that we did a good job on
Speaker 1: saying things other people have said that we did not
Speaker 1: do a good job. Um, I pronounced Nanana as Nanana
Speaker 1: again because we've gotten three different pronunciations. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I said Nanana in the show, and we've
Speaker 1: heard Nanana, Nana, and Nanana. I don't know which is
Speaker 1: the right one. So um. This is the case with
Speaker 1: many things that we try to say correctly in the show.
Speaker 1: So uh, I just want to talk about dogs somewhere.
Speaker 1: If you would like to write to us about this
Speaker 1: or any other podcast, you can. We're at History Podcast
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. We're also on Facebook,
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash miss in history and on Twitter
Speaker 1: at MS and history. Our tumbler is miss in history
Speaker 1: dot tumbler dot com, and we're on Pinterest at pentress
Speaker 1: dot com slash miss in History. We have a spreadshirt
Speaker 1: store full of shirts another good eat that is at
Speaker 1: miss in history dot spreadshirt dot com. If you would
Speaker 1: like to learn more about what we talked about today,
Speaker 1: you can come to our parent company's website, which is
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. You can put the word
Speaker 1: volcano in the search bar and you will find the
Speaker 1: article how Volcanoes Work. You can also come to our website,
Speaker 1: which is missing history dot com, where we have an
Speaker 1: archive of every single episode we have ever done, show
Speaker 1: notes for all the episodes that Holly and I am on,
Speaker 1: the blog posts for past hosts of the podcast, all
Speaker 1: kinds of cool stuff. So you can do all that
Speaker 1: and a whole lot more at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com or miss a history dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, is that how stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. M