Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam Here. When a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazon, chaos theory goes it may cause a tornado in Texas, or when the biggest volcanic explosion in human history takes place in Indonesia. Mary Shelley
writes Frankenstein in Switzerland, well, amongst many other things. Eighteen sixteen was the year without a summer, caused by the near catastrophic environmental changes that occurred when Mount Tombora erupted over the course of four months of the previous year, starting on April five, eighteen fifteen. The blast instantly killed ten thousand people on the island where it's located, Zimbawa,
which is part of the Lesser Sunda Islands. It was catastrophic and estimated ninety thousand people died on nearby islands, many of starvation after crops and forests were killed, fresh water was contaminated, a dozen cubic miles of debris were thrown into the atmosphere, and a blast a hundred times more powerful than Mountain Saint Helen's. But it isn't just debris that's flung into the air. When a volcano erupts, gases,
including sulfur dioxide, reached the stratosphere. The sulfur dioxide is converted to sulfuric acid, where it can stay in the atmosphere for a couple of years. Those acid aerosols act as reflectors that allow less energy from the Sun to reach Earth's surface, and as a result, cooling occurs and for the northern hemisphere cool It was that year in America.
In June of eighteen sixteen, there was twenty inches that's about fifty centimes of snow in New England, and the white stuff provided for festive sleigh rides in Virginia from May to September. In Ireland, it reigned a hundred forty two out of a hundred and fifty three days. Crops failed in North America, Europe, in China from frost or from unexpected drought or floods. It's the only year in recorded history where trees showed zero growth in the Northeast
United States. Should you cut down one of the stately oaks that was alive then and count its rings to determine how many years it's been around, one ring would be missing some Americans nicknamed the year eighteen hundred and froze to death in China. Resulting instability may have allowed the British controlled opium trade to take hold. A cholera epidemic swept South Asia and gained ground, becoming the first
cholera pandemic. In the following years, the American West started enticing failing New England farmers, creating the jumping off point for the Great migration westward. The dark, miserable weather of eighteen sixteen also inspired the poet Lord Byron to suggest to a summer guests and a Swiss villa to try their hand at ghost stories. A young Mary Shelley took to her room with candle light to penned the beginnings
of Frankenstein. During that time, Byron wrote his poem Darkness, which begins I had a dream which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished. Though to be fair, this summer that wasn't was also part of a larger cooling trend in the early nineteenth century, and we should note that the southern hemisphere seemed to be largely unaffected. Still, the no summer summer caused significant global ripples. The climate
crisis lasted through eighteen eighteen. Failed crops led to hunger and poverty, and communities around the Northern hemisphere the prices of everything skyrocketed. On the positive side, in the long run, anyway, these tragedies seemed to have spurred evolving ideas about humanitarianism, which was unfortunately just rhetoric at the time, but may have been the beginning of some of the social programs
that help people in need today. Yeah. Today's episode is based on the article eighteen sixteen was the Year Without a Summer on how stuff works dot com, written by Kate Kirshner. Brain Stuff is production of I Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot Com and is produced by Tyler Clay. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.