History Focus
for August 27

The atomic blasts that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki were awesome, but on August 27, 1883 the earth shook with a blast that was incomparably greater. A few dozen miles away from man's atomic blasts people were oblivious to the incident. When the East Indian island of Krakatoa blew up -- the entire world knew it.

The noise of the blast was heard 3,000 miles away. The ocean waves created from the blast reached the shores of four continents and were recorded 8000 miles away. An air wave created by the blast traveled clear around the world -- not just once, but several times. Where there was once an mountain a half mile high there was now a hole a thousand feet deep and miles across. Red hot debris covered an area the size of the state of Texas. Sometimes this red-hot debris was piled on land to a depth of 100 feet. Dust from the explosion was shot 30 miles upward into the air. For almost a year after the explosion this dust filled the high atmosphere over nearly the entire earth. Although there were no large towns within 100 miles of the volcano, 36,000 people lost their lives.

Krakatoa was a volcanic island of about 18 square miles in the Sundra Strait, between Java and Sumatra. Early in the spring of 1883, there were rumblings from the mountain. Smoke and steam poured from rock fissures, and a river of lava cut through the jungle. Krakatoa had puffed and rumbled before and the people of Java and Sumatra were not alarmed. There were lots of volcanoes in the East Indies and Krakatoa was nearly a hundred miles away.

Early on the morning of August 27 the ocean water reached the volcanic center of the island. This "fire under the teakettle" blew the lid off. The heart of the island Krakatoa was ripped out and 14 cubic miles of rock hurtled upward into the sky. The sun was blotted out and the darkness was punctuated by jagged lightening. Miles away, the sailors of the British ship Charles Bal watched the island shoot into the air looking like " a pine tree brilliantly illuminated by electric flashes." Much later came the noise. It was the loudest noise ever heard by human ears. People 1700 miles eastward in Victoria Plains, Australia were startled by what they thought was artillery fire. The soundwaves traveled 2968 miles westward to Rodrigues Island. Concentric waves of air started around the world. One and one half days later the first wave hit London from the west. A second wave hit London from the east. Four times the eastbound wave swept over London and three times it swept back.

The effect of the explosion on the sea was enormous. A wave of water, rising to 100 feet, swept over scores of villages. The wave raced across the entire Indian Ocean. When it reached Cape Town, South Africa, 5100 miles away it was still over one foot high.

Entire districts of Indonesia were buried under ashes. For a time lamps were needed day and night in Batavia. This debris was a small portion of the volcano. Most of the rock of Krakatoa was pulverized and blown 150,000 feet into the air. Clouds of this volcanic dust hung in the stratosphere for months. Air currents spread the dust all over the earth. The sunsets all over the earth were green and copper colored. The night brought a green moon and green stars. The sky colors from Krakatoa faded in the late spring of 1884.

Source: Our Amazing World of Nature