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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

12. An Explosion That Shocked People 1600 Miles Away

After its initial pop on April 5^th, 1815, Mount Tambora smoldered for the next few days, giving off faint detonation sounds from time to time. Then, on April 10^th, people in Sumatra, 1600 miles away, were shocked by what sounded like the boom of big guns opening up nearby. It was the sound of Tambora going off. The eruption instantly killed about 12,000 on Sumbawa Island. 80,000 more died in the surrounding region from famine and starvation, after falling ash and pumice ruined their crops and fields.

As investigators subsequently pieced the chain of events, Tambora’s eruptions had grown more energetic early in the morning of April 10^th. Flames shot up into the sky, and lava and glowing ash began pouring down the mountainside. By 8 AM, bits of pumice up to eight inches wide were falling down. Ash spewed into the air so thickly that it was pitch dark for two days, up to 400 miles away. The volcano gushed rivers of glowing ash down its sides to scorch Sumbawa Island, while its tremors sent tsunamis racing across the Java Sea.

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.