The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, the largest documented volcanic eruption in human history, killed approximately 90,000 people directly and produced the year without a summer in 1816, a climate disruption that caused famine across the Northern Hemisphere, may have triggered the first global cholera pandemic, and produced the cold dark summer at Lake Geneva during which Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein

On the evening of 5 April 1815, the residents of Java and surrounding Indonesian islands heard what they believed were cannon shots in the distance. British colonial administrators dispatched troops to investigate, assuming a naval engagement was underway somewhere offshore. The sounds were heard as far away as Sumatra, more than 2,000 kilometres from their [...] The post The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, the largest documented volcanic eruption in human history, killed approximat