It seems a lot of people only know the name "Krakatoa", but aren't aware of what actually happened over 100 years ago in 1883.

This has been one of those weird fascinations of mine...

THREAD

Krakatoa is now an island between the islands of Sumatra and Java in the Phillipines.

Emphasis on "now", because for a part of the 19th and 20th centuries there wasn't anything there. It was an underwater volcano that kept growing.

Krakatoa is probably one of, if not the, most active volcanoes on the planet. It has never stopped.

It was seeing a great deal of activity for years... and then, in August of 1883, it exploded.

Reportedly, the "explosion" was a two step process:

1) The volcano collapsed, effectively imploding.

2) All the sea water rushed in to fill the void, meets with the unending supply of magma, and... well... you know.

And I mean EXPLODED... It exploded with a projected force of 200 MEGATONS.

It ejected 6 CUBIC MILES of rock. Ash was sent into the stratosphere, 50 miles up.

The explosion was the single loudest single natural event ever. It was heard as far away as Australia, and was recorded on barographs around the world. The pressure wave circled the Earth THREE TIMES.

The explosion caused one of the largest tsunamis in recorded history... approximately 100 FEET high. Combined with the pyroclastic flow, it literally flattened everything around it. Hundreds of coastal villages in the area were simply wiped from the map.

There are reports of skeletons washing up in AFRICA, fused to "rafts" made of volcanic pumice, as much as a year later.

The explosion blacked out and/or reddened the sky all over the world for years.

Some speculate that it's the inspiration for the red sky in Edward Munch's "The Scream" in 1893.

Estimates on the number of dead aren't clear... It was the 19th century, and it was an underdeveloped part of the world at the time. The official count is about 36K, but some estimates put the number as high as 120K.

After the 1883 blast, the island of Krakatoa disappeared from the map...

In 1913, they thought they detected an eruption, but there was nothing there so they kinda wrote it off.

IN 1927, a small island cracked the surface and began to grow. They happily named the island Anak Krakatoa, or "Child of Krakatoa".

That little island has been growing ever since. It is now over 300 feet high.

In 2018 it erupted. The resulting tsunami (which was *only* 20 meters) killed about 500 people on the surrounding coast.

Honestly, that was nothing. It's overdue, and when it really blows it's going to be devastating.