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Historic Disasters That Were Way Worse Than People Think

Khalid Elhassan April 6, 2020 33 min

Yellow River - 1887 Yellow River flood — 1887 Yellow River Flood. Hakai Magazine

29. Krakatoa Broke The Sound Record Twice in a Single Day

Krakatoa Island before the eruption (bottom) and after (top). Bibliotica Nacional de Espana

Krakatoa’s 10:02 AM eruption was the loudest sound in recorded history until then, but that record did not last for long. At 10:41, a fourth and more powerful eruption occurred, that at 310 decibels was almost twice as loud as the previous one. It was loud enough to rupture eardrums at a distance of 40 miles, and was clearly heard from 3100 miles away.

A tsunami with a wall of water up to 120 feet high raced out. Ash was flung 50 miles up into the sky by an explosion that produced a pressure wave that was recorded in barometers all over the world. It appeared on global barometers not once, but seven times, as the pressure wave raced around the planet for five days. It kept circling the globe and coming back to the volcano, and continuing on, again and again and again, still powerful enough to register on barometers everywhere on earth as it circled the planet multiple times.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.