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Nonfiction UP Cause and Effect CLOSE As you read this article, look for the many effects caused by the eruption of one volcano. LOOK FOR WORD NERD’S 8 TERMS IN BOLD The OLThatC Changed the World V Two hundred years ago, an unknown volcano caused death and destruction around the world BY LAUREN TARSHIS A NN HA Y R A G 4 STORYWORKS ANO ThatC Changed the World en-year-old John Hoisington stared in shock out the window of his family’s Vermont farmhouse. It was June 8, 1816. Summer was just two weeks away. Yet outside, a wild Twinter snowstorm was raging. EWSCOM N MAGES/ I Y tt E Nearly a foot of snow covered the fields the family had planted only G P/ AF / weeks before. The family’s vegetable garden was buried. The apple and pear NAEG trees shivered in the freezing wind, their delicate buds coated with ice. AN L AR SToRywoRkS.ScholaSTic.coM • SEPTEMBER 2014 5 6 Tambora. Tambora. away fromtheirfarm. that tookplaceayearearlier and10,000miles sufferingwasan event cause oftheirfamily’s have beenastonishedto learnthetruth:The likely JohnHoisingtonandhisfamilywould Very scientists havefinallysolvedthemystery. witchestoblame? Were wildly. what hadcausedtheweathertochangeso across northernChina. droughts England, Ireland,andSwitzerland.Therewere Maine. Snowstormsandfloods struckFrance, up to Virginia farms, from other EastCoast thousands of Snow destroyed and theworld. New England— throughout were unfolding weather disasters of 1816,similar strange summer that during knowwas didn’t and hisfamily they survive? animals. would belittlefood forthefamilyortheir This stormwouldkillalloftheircrops.There eyes astheywatchedthesnowswirlingoutside. Johnsawthelookoffearinhisfather’s stew. to thechickenandpotatoesinsupper-time farm, fromthecornintheirmorningporridge food camefromthe every biteofthefamily’s grew almosteverythingtheyate.Practically STORYWORKS It allstartedwithavolcano calledMount that nearly200years later, It isonlynow, Atthetime,peoplestruggledtounderstand What John How would Like mostpeoplein1816,theHoisingtons andfloods inIndiaandkillingfrosts and ricefarms.Nobody hadanyreasonto aquietmountaindottedwithvillages Tambora, over thenorthernsideofislandwasMount streams, gentlehills,andthickjungles.Looming lived onSumbawa,abeautifullandofrushing of Indonesia.In1815,perhaps50,000people Sumbawa, whichtoday ispartofthenation Land A Ruined The book eruption. over EnglandintheyearsafterTambora’s musthaveseen of theskywasinspiredbywhatTurner Butexpertsbelievethatthecolor of MountVesuvius. is Turner, effects.Thispainting,byJ.M.W. Tambora’s Above: ManyEuropeanpaintersunknowinglycaptured Switzerland duringthe Tambora. AuthorMary Tambora. was partlyinspiredby Shelley (above)wrote endless gloom ofthe the novelinstormy Mount Tambora sitsontheislandof Mount Tambora summer of1816. Frankenstein MOUNT VESUVIUS IN ERUPTION, 1817 (W/C ON PAPER), TURNER, JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM (1775-1851) / YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART, PAUL MELLON COLLECTION, USA / THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY (TOP); DEAGOSTINI/DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/GEttY IMAGES (BOttOM LEFT); UNIVERSAL/THE KOBAL COLLECTION (BOttOM RIGHT) KAS HM The Eruption Felt AroundIR the World From India to the Arctic, Tambora’s volcanic cloud caused misery Arctic Ocean Europe Ireland (crop failures, major famine), England (massive North rains, flooding, crop America failures), Switzerland (crop failures, rain) Arctic Region Europe Temporary warming Pacific caused melting of sea U.S. Asia Ocean ice. British explorers mistakenly believed the Atlantic China melting was permanent, Ocean (Yunnan and many were later Arabian Bay of Province) trapped by refrozen Africa Sea Bengal Climate change ice. caused INDONESIA famine. Pacific New England South Ocean (Massachusetts Indian America Ocean up to Maine) Mt.Tambora Ohio Valley Snow in the Australia and today’s summer of 1816 Indiana resulted in crop India Migration of New failures. (areas around Bay England farmers led of Bengal) to huge population A major outbreak of growth in these cholera was caused areas, and statehood by an irregular for Indiana. monsoon season. suspect that the peaceful mountain was in fact a wave of flames and gases swept down the a volcano, that underneath its velvety green mountain at speeds of 400 miles per hour. slopes were snaking tunnels filled with lava and This pyroclastic surge devastated everything explosive gases. Like many volcanoes, Tambora in its path. looked like an ordinary mountain and had been dormant—quiet––for centuries. But on April 5, Ignored and Forgotten 1815, Tambora woke up. The eruption instantly killed at least 12,000 The first eruption shook the island and sent people living on and around Mount Tambora. up great plumes of fire and ash. But that was Ash and lava ruined the island’s soil and nothing compared with what would come five poisoned its rivers and streams. Rice paddies days later, on April 10. were destroyed. No fruits or vegetables would Kaboom! grow. There were no fish to catch; almost every The volcano exploded with terrible fury, animal had been killed. Trapped without food spewing out great towers of fire. A tremendous on their ruined lands, more than 90,000 people cloud of gas and ash shot high into the sky. The on Sumbawa and the nearby island of Lombok M T day turned midnight black, but the mountain slowly starved to death. MAN P glowed red as rivers of lava gushed down the The eruption of Tambora in 1815 was the MA / slopes. The eruption went on for more than most deadly and powerful volcanic eruption MAHON C M three days, a deadly storm of fire, gas, ash, and in human history. Its explosive energy was 10 IM P: J MA rock. In the eruption’s terrifying final stage, times stronger than that of Krakatoa, history’s SToRywoRkS.ScholaSTic.coM • SEPTEMBER 2014 7 Comparing Volcanoes Scientists measure the power of volcanic eruptions on a scale of 0-8, with 8 being Vesuvius Tambora the most powerful and 0 being the least Italy Indonesia 79 A.D. 1815 powerful. Here is how some major eruptions rated. 5 7 most famous volcano, which erupted in 1883, also in what is now Indonesia. And yet, incredibly, few people outside the blast zone learned about this terrible disaster. The people of Sumbawa and surrounding islands led Tambora is quiet today, but simple lives. Few of them its crater shows the damage had any connections to far- from the 1815 eruption. off lands like Europe or the Americas. Some British sailors witnessed the Solving a Mystery eruption. But news and information traveled In 1816, not even the most brilliant very slowly in 1815. The only way to get a letter scientists would have believed that these (or a person) across oceans was on a sailing weather problems were somehow connected— ship. The voyage from Sumbawa to New York that all these disasters had been caused by the or London would have taken perhaps four eruption of a volcano few had heard of. Little months. Eventually, reports of the eruption did was known about climate or volcanoes. But make it back to England, but few people paid today, scientists know that volcanoes can have a attention. Somehow, the deadliest volcano in major impact on weather worldwide. They have history was ignored by most of the world—and learned by studying recent volcanic eruptions, then forgotten. like Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. What people were paying attention to a Scientists monitored every phase of year later, in 1816, was the terrible weather— Pinatubo’s eruption in June 1991. It was not snowstorms in the summer, floods that turned as powerful as Tambora. But the eruption was wheat fields into lakes, frosts that blackened monstrous, one of the most powerful since millions of acres of farmland around the world. Krakatoa. Farmers up and down the East Coast lost their Using satellites and computers, scientists crops. In Europe, farmers grew desperate. In tracked the volcano’s huge eruption cloud as it O T Paris, mobs of people broke into warehouses rose into the sky. Most volcanic clouds quickly P PHO A where grain was stored, risking their lives to dissipate—break apart and fade away. But in a MAGES/ I AS steal sacks of flour. In China, starving families very powerful eruption, the cloud rises so high P could no longer feed their children. Floods in that it mixes with water and other gases in the KOM IYAWAN/ T India triggered an outbreak of a disease called stratosphere. It turns into a foam and remains E S WAN WAN cholera, which killed millions. high in the sky. Scientists observed Pinatubo’s I 8 STORYWORKS Mt. Krakatoa Pinatubo St. Helens Indonesia Philippines USA 1883 1991 1980 6 5 6 And many more lives—like the Artifacts like Hoisingtons’—had been forever these pieces of pottery changed. have been John and his family survived unearthed from the the loss of their crops. But they ruins on gave up their farm and moved Tambora’s west to Ohio. They started their slopes. trek in June 1817, traveling in an oxcart piled with their possessions. Tens of thousands of other New England farmers made similar journeys, all driven west by the hardships of 1816. It was one of the biggest migrations in U.S. history. Most migrants went to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The Hoisingtons’ 1,000-mile cloud as it spread across the world. Like a layer journey took three months. John’s older sister of sunscreen slathered across the sky, the cloud Sabrina recorded the trip in her diary. She blocked out some of the sun’s heat and light. described the family’s meeting with American Temperatures dropped, and storms became more Indians, long days of slogging through mud, and violent. It took three years for Pinatubo’s foamy some enjoyable visits with friends they met along haze to clear. Tambora’s cloud would have been the way. They arrived in Ohio in August and even bigger, its effects more devastating. Indeed, were soon settled in to life on their new farm. like an invisible beast, Tambora’s cloud hovered Meanwhile, 10,000 miles away, the volcano in the sky for about three years. By the time that had nearly destroyed their lives went back the climate returned to normal, as many as 30 to sleep, sitting in silence to this day—until it million people had died from Tambora’s effects.