Odd Bag

If you read enough history, you come across all sorts of fascinating stories. Some things are just plan educational–you didn’t know that had happened before. And some historical occurrences put things in perspective that life could be a lot worse.

The following two stories have a superficial similarity, but their outcomes are radically different. The first seems like the Egyptian plague of darkness as recorded in Exodus chapter 10. The second even sounds a bit like the afflictions in Revelations that accompanied the seals, trumpets, and the bowls in Revelations chapters 6, 8, and 16.

New England’s Dark Day

Date: May 19th, 1780

An unusual darkening of the day sky is observed over the New England states and parts of Canada. The darkness was so complete that candles were required from noon on. It did not disperse until the middle of the next night. According to Professor Samuel Williams of Harvard College, the Darkness was seen at least as far north as Portland, Maine, and extended southwards to New Jersey. The Darkness was not witnessed in Pennsylvania.

The earliest report of the darkness came from Rupert, New York, where the sun was already obscured at sunrise. Professor Samuel Williams observed from Cambridge that: “This extraordinary darkness came on between the hours of 10 and 11 A. M. and continued till the middle of the next night.” Reverend Ebenezer Parkham, of Westborough, Massachusetts, reported peak obscurity to occur “by 12″, but did not record the time when the obscuration first arrived.

At Harvard College, the obscuration was reported to arrive at 10:30 AM, peaking at 12:45 PM, and abating by 1:10 PM, although a heavy overcast remained for the rest of the day. The obscuration was reported to have reached Barnstable, Massachusetts, by 2:00 PM, with peak obscurity reported to have occurred at 5:30 PM.

For several days before the Dark Day, the sun as viewed from New England appeared to be red, and the sky appeared yellow. While the Darkness was present, soot was observed to be collected in rivers and in rain water, suggesting the presence of smoke. Also, when the night really came in, observers saw the moon as red as blood.

Regarding the cause of this strange event, it is speculated that the likely cause of the Dark Day was smoke from massive forest fires in Ontario, Canada.

The above information was extracted from the Wikipedia article⁽¹⁾ on the event. You can find a little more info (including a few more anecdotes) at a Wired article⁽²⁾

The Desolation of Iceland

Date: June 8th, 1783

The dark day of New England ended up being a fascinating (or frightening) piece of phenomena, but in the end it caused no lasting harm–at least to those recorded as having observed it. Not so for the June 8th eruption of Mount Laki in Iceland three years later. The effects from this were of staggering, apocalyptic, proportions.

According to Wikipedia:⁽³⁾

On 8 June 1783, a fissure with 130 craters opened with phreatomagmatic explosions because of the groundwater interacting with the rising basalt magma. These are sometimes mistaken by non-volcanologists as being “plinian” but are not. Over a few days the eruptions became less explosive, Strombolian, and later Hawaiian in character, with high rates of lava effusion. This event is rated as VEI 6 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, but the eight month emission of sulfuric aerosols resulted in one of the most important climatic and socially repercussive events of the last millennium.

The eruption, also known as the Skaftáreldar (“Skaftá river fires”) or Síðueldur, produced an estimated 14 km3 (3.4 cu mi) of basalt lava, and the total volume of tephra emitted was 0.91 km3 (0.2 cu mi). Lava fountains were estimated to have reached heights of 800-1400 m (~2,600-4,600 ft). In Great Britain, the summer of 1783 was known as the “sand-summer” due to ash fallout. The gases were carried by the convective eruption column to altitudes of about 15 kilometres (10 mi). The aerosols built up caused a cooling effect in the Northern Hemisphere.

The eruption continued until 7 February 1784, but most of the lava was erupted in the first five months. Grímsvötn volcano, from which the Laki fissure extends, was also erupting at the time from 1783 until 1785. The outpouring of gases, including an estimated 8 million tons of fluorine and estimated 120 million tons of sulfur dioxide gave rise to what has since become known as the “Laki haze” across Europe.

One of the most important climatic and socially repercussive events of the last millennium? Why don’t the history books they give you in school spend more (any?) time on this? You get to read all about Pompeii and its obliteration, but hear nary a word about this.

Continuing from the Wikipedia article:

The consequences for Iceland — known as the Mist Hardships — were catastrophic. An estimated 20-25% of the population died in the famine and fluorine poisoning after the fissure eruptions ceased. Around 80% of sheep, 50% of cattle and 50% of horses died because of dental and skeletal fluorosis from the 8 million tons of fluorine that were released.

A first person account states,

“This past week, and the two prior to it, more poison fell from the sky than words can describe: ash, volcanic hairs, rain full of sulfur and salt peter, all of it mixed with sand. The snouts, nostrils, and feet of livestock grazing or walking on the grass turned bright yellow and raw. All water went tepid and light blue in color and gravel slides turned gray. All the earth’s plants burned, withered and turned gray, one after another, as the fire increased and neared the settlements.”

And Gilbert White recorded at Selbourne that,

The summer of the year 1783 was an amazing and portentous one, and full of horrible phaenomena; for besides the alarming meteors and tremendous thunder-storms that affrighted and distressed the different counties of this kingdom, the peculiar haze, or smokey fog, that prevailed for many weeks in this island, and in every part of Europe, and even beyond its limits, was a most extraordinary appearance, unlike anything known within the memory of man. By my journal I find that I had noticed this strange occurrence from June 23 to July 20 inclusive, during which period the wind varied to every quarter without making any alteration in the air. The sun, at noon, looked as blank as a clouded moon, and shed a rust- coloured ferruginous light on the ground, and floors of rooms; but was particularly lurid and blood-coloured at rising and setting. All the time the heat was so intense that butchers’ meat could hardly be eaten on the day after it was killed; and the flies swarmed so in the lanes and hedges that they rendered the horses half frantic, and riding irksome. The country people began to look with a superstitious awe, at the red, louring aspect of the sun;

And as for the wider impact on Europe,

An estimated 122 Tg (120 million tons) of sulfur dioxide were emitted: approximately equivalent to three times the total annual European industrial output in 2006, and also equivalent to a Mount Pinatubo-1991 eruption every three days. This outpouring of sulfur dioxide during unusual weather conditions caused a thick haze to spread across western Europe, resulting in many thousands of deaths throughout 1783 and the winter of 1784.

The summer of 1783 was the hottest on record and a rare high pressure zone over Iceland caused the winds to blow to the south-east. The poisonous cloud drifted to Bergen in Norway, then spread to Prague in the Province of Bohemia by 17 June, Berlin by 18 June, Paris by 20 June, Le Havre by 22 June, and to Great Britain by 23 June. The fog was so thick that boats stayed in port, unable to navigate, and the sun was described as “blood coloured”.

Inhaling sulfur dioxide gas causes victims to choke as their internal soft tissue swells. The local death rate in Chartres was up by 5% during August and September, with over 40 dead. In Great Britain, the records show that the additional deaths were outdoor workers, and perhaps 2-3 times above the normal rate in Bedfordshire, Lincolnshire and the east coast. It has been estimated that 23,000 British people died from the poisoning in August and September.

The haze also heated up causing severe thunderstorms with hailstones that were reported to have killed cattle until it dissipated in the autumn. This disruption then led to a most severe winter in 1784, where Gilbert White at Selborne in Hampshire reported 28 days of continuous frost. The extreme winter is estimated to have caused 8,000 additional deaths in the UK. In the spring thaw, Germany and Central Europe then reported severe flood damage.

The meteorological impact of Laki resonated on, contributing significantly to several years of extreme weather in Europe. In France a sequence of extremes included a surplus harvest in 1785 that caused poverty for rural workers, accompanied by droughts, bad winters and summers, including a violent hailstorm in 1788 that destroyed crops. This in turn contributed significantly to the build up of poverty and famine that triggered the French Revolution in 1789. Laki was only a factor in a decade of climatic disruption, as Grímsvötn was erupting from 1783-1785 and a recent study of El Niño patterns also suggests an unusually strong El-Niño effect between 1789-93.

Did you read that? It produce three times the sulfur dioxide of the annual industrial output of Europe in 2006! It puts things in a bit of perspective. People are all in a tizzy over global warming, or the possibility that a meteor could hit earth and cause catastrophic damage. And if a big one did strike, it could cause terrible destruction. But something doesn’t have to fall from the heavens to do that. The ground can simply erupt from beneath our feet. Imagine what would happen if Laki erupted again like it did in 1783, or even worse?

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(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_England%27s_Dark_Day
(2) http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/05/dayintech_0519?npu=1&mbid=yhp&ybf1=1
(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laki