History.com has
this:
The most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history occurs on Krakatau (also called Krakatoa), a small, uninhabited volcanic island located west of Sumatra in Indonesia, on this day in 1883. Heard three thousand miles away, the explosions threw five cubic miles of earth fifty miles into the air, created hundred-foot tsunamis, and killed nearly forty thousand people.
Krakatau exhibited its first stirrings in more than two hundred years ago, on 20 May 1883. A German warship passing by reported a seven-mile high cloud of ash and dust over Krakatau. For the next two months, similar explosions would be witnessed by commercial liners and natives on nearby Java and Sumatra. With little to no idea of the impending catastrophe, the local inhabitants greeted the volcanic activity with festive excitement.
On 26 and 27 August 1883, excitement turned to horror as Krakatau literally blew itself apart, setting off a chain of natural disasters that would be felt around the world for years to come. An enormous blast on the afternoon of 26 August destroyed the northern two-thirds of the island; as it plunged into the Sunda Strait, between the Java Sea and Indian Ocean, the gushing mountain generated a series of pyroclastic flows and monstrous tsunamis that swept over nearby coastlines. Four more eruptions beginning at 0530 the following day proved cataclysmic. The explosions could be heard as far as three thousand miles away, and ash was propelled to a height of fifty miles. Fine dust from the explosion drifted around the earth, causing spectacular sunsets and forming an atmospheric veil that lowered temperatures worldwide by several degrees.
Of the estimated thirty-six thousand deaths resulting from the eruption, at least thirty thousand were caused by the tsunamis created when much of the island fell into the water. The greatest of these waves measured over a hundred feet high, and washed over nearby islands, stripping away vegetation and carrying people out to sea. Another five thousand people were scorched to death from the pyroclastic flows that rolled over the sea, stretching as far as forty miles, according to some sources.
In addition to Krakatau, which is still active (photo), Indonesia has more than a hundred active volcanoes, the most of any country in the world.
Rico says another event he's glad he missed... (Thought the spectacular sunsets that followed inspired the
Impressionists, it seems.)
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