Year Without a Summer
June 1816
Tambora's ash veiled the sun across the Northern Hemisphere. Snow fell in June in New England; crops failed from Ireland to China; typhus and famine stalked Europe. Mary Shelley, trapped by rain in a Swiss villa, wrote Frankenstein. Turner painted sunsets of impossible color. The volcano had rewritten the weather and, accidentally, the century's literature.
In context
Also in 1816 (3 other events on record)
- Shaka Becomes Zulu Chief · Africa · Politics
- Argentine Independence · South America · Politics
- Stethoscope Invented · Europe · Science
Before and after in Europe
Before and after in Disaster
Era
Industrial Age (1801–1900), one of 513 events from that era on Saeculum.