Historians estimate that at least a million people starved in the aftermath of Tambora’s eruption, while tens of millions died from a global cholera pandemic that it unleashed. Famines, epidemics and political revolts followed. Crop failures stretched across Europe, Asia and even North America for three years afterward. Instead of sunshine, most of Europe was covered in fog and even frost. The next summer, the warm growing season never came. The eruption killed roughly 100,000 people in its immediate aftermath, but the overall toll ended up being much higher-it is now considered to be the deadliest volcano eruption in history. In 1815, a gigantic volcanic eruption at Mount Tambora in Indonesia choked the air with ash and dust. Strangely enough, the saga of Frankenstein started not with a vision but with a volcano. She wrote her masterpiece Frankenstein when she was just 19 years old, and the dark, stormy summer nights that helped bring her monstrous creation to life were nearly as dramatic as the novel itself. It sounds like the stuff of a horror story-and for Mary Shelley, it was. Thunder, lightning and flickering candles.
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