The year 1816 was included in all history textbooks as a “year without summer”. In the USA he was even dubbed "one thousand eight hundred frozen to death." Throughout all 366 days - and 1816 was a leap year - there was disgusting, abnormally cold weather: in winter, and in spring, and in summer, and in autumn it was raining and snowing. Of course, this affected the harvest. And also in literature, technology and chemistry.
VOLCANO ON STAGE
Strictly speaking, there was no summer for three whole years - from 1816 to 1818. Scientists even call this time the Little Ice Age. But 1816 was the first, and therefore it hit humanity especially hard. Then, of course, it adapted, and the weather began to improve a little, but nevertheless.
Why has the planet's climate changed dramatically? It's all the fault of active volcanic activity. It all began as early as 1812: on the Leeward Islands off the coast of Venezuela, the La Soufriere volcano woke up, and in Indonesia, Awu woke up from sleep. The Japanese volcano Suvanosejima in 1813 and the Philippine Mayon in 1814 picked up and continued this baton. The total amount of ash thrown out by them and spreading throughout the planet was enough to lower the average annual temperature by 0.5-0.7 degrees. The situation was difficult, but not yet critical. And then in April 1815 on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, the Tambora volcano exploded. In a few hours, an island with an area of 15448 sq. km was completely covered with a layer of volcanic ash 1.5 meters thick. It was the strongest eruption on record,which cost the lives of 71,000 people. This sad record, fortunately, has not been broken so far. Seven points out of eight possible on the scale of volcanic eruptions. 150 cc km of ash not only enveloped the earth, but rose into the upper layers of the atmosphere and began to reflect the sun's rays - as if thick curtains had curtained the windows on a clear day.
Then there was a chain reaction. The amount of solar thermal energy decreased, the waters of the seas and oceans cooled, and ultimately the temperature of every month, every day in 1816 fell by 2.5-3 degrees. From the eyes of a person sitting inside a house connected to a central heating system, three degrees is sheer nonsense. But something happened in the 19th century, when even the imperial palaces were heated exclusively with firewood. And for the people of that time, "nonsense" three degrees turned into a real disaster.
Hungry Riots
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Cold, famine and epidemics - this is what the Europeans had to face in 1816. Winter did not even think to end in February, capturing not only March, but even April and May. As for the summer, it didn't start at all. Even in July it was snowing, and in order to count the days without rain, the fingers of one hand would be enough. Even then it became clear that there would be no harvest. And so it happened, and already in the fall, food riots began. Grain prices, as well as other food products, have skyrocketed. The people everywhere smashed warehouses and took out everything that could be taken out. England, France, Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Holland were engulfed in riots, arson and looting. The Swiss authorities even imposed a state of emergency and a curfew. The governments of other countries were one step away from a similar measure,but another attack came. A typhus epidemic broke out, which in little Ireland alone claimed a hundred thousand lives. People thought of only one thing - how to survive, they left the cities en masse and sat at home in vain attempts to warm up …
THERE WAS NOTHING TO DO
Among these fugitives were Lord Byron, along with Percy Shelley. They were accompanied by their companions - Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont, as well as writer and physician John William Polidori, hired by Byron to monitor his health. They rented a house and a villa in the vicinity of Lake Geneva, hoping to at least find a piece of good weather there. In vain. As Mary Shelley later recalled: "The summer was damp and cold, the incessant rain did not let us out of the house all day long."
What was the creative intelligentsia to do? Conversations, reading aloud, discussing the latest news. The company gathered in the fireplace room at Byron's villa and, languishing with melancholy, came up with entertainment to match the weather. Under the sound of the rain and the howling of the wind, stories of ghosts and the dead went well. For some reason, I recalled the experiments of Erasmus Darwin, a poet who in the 18th century studied how a weak electric current affects the organs of a dead person. It was then that Byron threw in an idea: shouldn't each of them write a story on a supernatural theme - there is still nothing to do? All happily agreed and began to write. We all know perfectly well how this innocent contest ended: Mary Shelley ended up writing a whole novel about Dr. Frankenstein. By popularity, this character, invented in the cold summer of 1816,to this day ahead of all the monsters ever born of human consciousness. The novel has gone through dozens of reprints, and it has been filmed countless times.
Byron's imagination gave birth to a certain August Darwell, who ate exclusively the blood of his beloved. Percy Shelley laughed, the ladies were horrified, and Polidori remembered the plot. After Byron fired him, he took up writing. Although, it is more honest to call his work a presentation: Polidori wrote a short story about Lord Ruthven, calling it "Vampire", and published it under the name of Bayoron. Then these two were suing for a long time, dressed up, and the respectable audience followed the scandal on the pages of newspapers, becoming more and more imbued with the vampire theme. So we can safely say that it was August Darwell, another “product” of the year without summer, who initiated the general fascination with ghouls and bloodsuckers.
WALKING MACHINE
Most likely, the name of Karl von Drese will not tell you anything. Unless it will evoke associations with a railroad car. That's right: the cart, rolling on the rails due to the muscular drive, was invented by von Drez, a German baron who chose the path of invention.
1816 found him in Karlsruhe, so the Baron fully experienced all the delights of a year without summer. But the strongest impression on von Dreis was made by the situation with transport, the role of which in the 19th century was played by horses. There was nothing to feed them, since all the oats died on the vine, and therefore the owners had nothing to do but shoot their faithful horses. As a result, the cities stood tight: there was nothing to drive!
Karl von Drez decided to develop an alternative form of transport that did not require feed. And in 1817, the baron created, if not a bicycle, then its prototype: two wheels, a frame with a seat and a T-shaped steering wheel. This type of transport did not have pedals: the rider was asked to push off the ground with his feet. The baron himself called his invention a "walking machine." Today, similar devices, called balance bikes, are at the peak of popularity: all advanced parents buy them for their babies as the first child transport. According to the unanimous opinion of neurologists and orthopedists, riding a balance bike is very beneficial. Plus, it's a lot of fun. But under what circumstances was created …
GIVE YOUR HARVEST
Another, delayed, consequence of 1816, appeared only in 1831. What can you do - it was by this time that the son of a pharmacist from Darmstadt, Justus von Liebig, finally "entered the mind." He was 28 years old, he graduated from two universities - in Bonn and Erlangen and began to study chemistry closely. But which one? Childhood memories of a hungry "volcanic winter" pushed him to the question: how to increase the productivity of plants? The result of Justus's research was superphosphate fertilizers, using which it was possible to collect much more grain, without correcting for the weather overboard …
Vladimir STROGANOV