the year without a summer
SO! I am a huge fan of these pieces recently that have been talking about geologists solving mysteries that people have been trying to solve for years. The most popular one recently is the New Yorkerâs piece about the Cascadia subduction zone, which yes, is about potentially most of the Pacific Northwest potentially sliding into the ocean, but what I found exciting was that they solved a mystery!
the Japanese have kept track of [tsunamis] since at least 599 A.D. In that fourteen-hundred-year history, one incident has long stood out for its strangeness. On the eighth day of the twelfth month of the twelfth year of the Genroku era, a six-hundred-mile-long wave struck the coast, levelling homes, breaching a castle moat, and causing an accident at sea. The Japanese understood that tsunamis were the result of earthquakes, yet no one felt the ground shake before the Genroku event. The wave had no discernible origin. When scientists began studying it, they called it an orphan tsunami.
AND it turns out this earthquake originated on the Cascadia fault, but since Native / First Nation tribes had no way of communicating to Japan in 1700 AD, the events were never connected. Please read the whole piece, itâs super fascinating.
Add this to the theory in 2003 that the reason Munchâs The Scream has such vibrant red sunsets is a result of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa had put so much particulate matter into the air that Norway experienced unusually red twilight glows.
Whatâs next? Well, the New York Times highlights an upcoming book, Tambora: The Eruption that Changed the World, which posits that the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 caused massive weather changes across the world, which had been recorded (traditionally called âThe Year Without a Summerâ which sounds straight out of Game of Thrones) but never connected. Digging deeper, he credits Tambora with the writing of Frankenstein, turbulent / vibrant skies in paintings (see the Turner below), and a devastating cholera epidemic in India.
Still on the mystery slate is the 1808 Mystery Eruption, which was probably a VEI6, probably contributed to global cooling, and which we have no record of (only samples of ice cores). Get on it, science!
In other news, this funeral of a mafioso in Rome is the greatest thing that I have ever read, like this is literally the subheading:
Vittorio Casamonica farewelled with gilded horse-drawn carriage, flower petals tossed from helicopter and banner on church saying he would âconquer paradiseâ
AND they played the Godfather theme! While denying he was in the mafia!!
Long(ish) reads: Rachel Zarrell on confronting a Twitter hoax-maker, who continually claims that what he did was âentertainment,â but definitely played it straight, so itâs no wonder people fell for it. That being said, it also says something about the ~eternal quest for content~ that people are so eager to share something viral that they donât check its veracity. Also check out this beautiful piece on seal hunters in Greenland, their way of life, and how the number of them is depleting year over year.
Etcetera: List of inventors killed by their own inventions. Backstreet Boys and *NSync are making a zombie movie (!!!). Bear sleeping bag (!)
gummygunk
jimmyeatworldofficial
blakekathryn
pixelskylines
