fact'o' the day, the Volcano that spured the Fench revolution

[Science Abuse]

Because the more you know, the more you grow. That has to equate to some penis enlargemnt, too, right?

 

How did an indonesian eruption effect politics in Europe? In 1815, a volcano in southern indonesia exploded, and ended up spuring more world changing events then any natural occurance in history.

The volcano is Mt Tambora. Given the small size of the island that it was on, it had to be one of the worlds most prominent peaks, since it rose from sea level to 13,000ft in less then 10 miles. In 1815 it blew its top in what is still the greatest explosion ever witnessed my man, even though all those who were actualy close enough to see it died fairly quickly. The top 4000ft of the peak and much of the core of the mountain were blasted into the atmosphere. An estimated 45 cubic miles of rock was turned to ash and cast into the pacific winds. This began what would be known as the year without a summer. Mt. St Hellens blew with 10,000 time the force of our first atomic weapons. Tamboras blast was more then 100 time larger. The remaining crater is almost 5 miles across and over a mile deep. You can fit almost all of Dublin in it.

http://thewoodomain.net/files/11/tambora.JPG

 

http://www.merelyscene.com/tambora/image/wall.tambora.jpg

The crater looks more akin to the Grand Canyon when looking down from the culdera wall.

http://www.merelyscene.com/tambora/image/wall2.tambora.jpg

http://people.uncw.edu/abramsl/Tambora-Abrams-web.jpg

This event dropped the global temperature an average 3 deg, and cased "the Year Without a Summer" in europe. The closer you got the the poles, the colder it stayed. As a result agriculture throughout Europe and The Americas was devistated. Over the next year the effects spread across the globe with the winds, there were reports of brown and red snow falling in hungary and italy. The folowing winter, the canals of vencice actualy froze over. By spring they were feeling the full effect of the event. The lack of food, and moreover the Regents apathy about it was the finals straw that pushed french peasants to revolt. A young lady by the name of mary shelly, while on summer vacation with her family, found it too cold to do anything outside, so she and he siblings had a competiton as to who could write the scariest story, hers was titled "Frankenstiens Monster".

The dismal conditions in northern europe cause a massive exodus of norther Europeans westward to the United States. But there was no refuge here. In the states, "The year without a summer" was more often refered to as "The year eighteen hundred and froze to death". The conditions in new england were the same as in europe, and Americans began moving west to find better conditions.

 

In the immdiate vecinity, it wiped an entire civilation off the map and out of history. Only recently has evidence been found of, not only inhabitants, but a rather large city on the island of Sumbawa. It was all immediately vaporized. Furthermore, over 90,000+ inhabitants of neighboring islands were killed in the initial blast, and most survivors died in the folowing months. Not only did it kill all the Subawans, but it killed almost everyone they traded with, leaving no one alive who even knew they existed.

 

This shit amazed me, so I thought I'd share. If it happened again, we'd be almost as fucked as we were back then. Nature > *

[SpaceGhost]

great read.