Catastrophic events in the Past
Cotopaxi volcano eruption, Frederic Church.
65 million years ago -- Iridium
at the K-2 boundary evidence for a large meteor impact
740,000
ya explosion
in the Long Valley Caldera, Calif. – the debris from the pyroclastic
explosion has been found as far as Arkansas and Missouri.
Bronze Age catastrophe (Volcanic,
possibly Thera) Minoan & Babylonian collapse
1500 BCE, Thira or Thera, Eruption in about 1500 B.C. may have destroyed Minoan
civilization on Crete;
79, AD Mount Vesuvius erupted.
The first
recorded eruption occurred on Aug. 24, A.D. 79, when the cities of Herculaneum,
Pompeii, and Stabiae were covered by ashes and lava. An eyewitness account of
the disaster was written by a Roman author, Pliny the Younger. His uncle, Pliny
the Elder, was killed during the eruption.
312 AD ConstantineÕs
victory
540 AD Unknown
causes for a period of 18 difficult years
1100 circa Yangtze
River changed it course and mouth
1492, First eyewitness of a rock falling
out of the sky (meteorite) striking in a French-German town, Entesheim
1669, Mount Etna eruption, filled 20,000
people.
1794 meteor
shower
April 1803, 3000
(nickel/ iron) stones fell on a French town
1815, Mount Tambora eruption released 6 million times more energy than that
of an atomic bomb; killed about 92,000 people, caused little ice age.
1877, Mount Cotopaxi eruption caused ashfalls and mudflows that killed
about 1,000 people.
1883, Krakatoa, Sunda Straights; August
1883. The eruption killed about 36,000 people on nearby islands. It generated
ocean waves of up to 130 feet (40 meters) high.
1887, The worst Huang Ho (4th
in world) flood occurred killing a (est.) million people
1902, Mount Pelee, Martinique, Glowing cloud from 1902 eruption destroyed city of St.-Pierre, killing about 30,000 people in minutes.
1908, The Tunguska eventso called was a Tunguska forest fall on June 30, 1908, occurred north and northwest of Lake Baikal in Central Siberia, and underground jolts spread across the territory.
1991, Mount Pinatubo, Phillipines, eruption in 1991, perhaps the largest of the
1900's, spewed about 20 million tons (18 million metric tons) of sulfur dioxide
gas into the atmosphere.
2005, December: a Tsunami from a fault block slippage along
the Indonesian island plate boundary sends a wave of water across the Indian
ocean, the largest in recorded times killing thousands of unsuspecting
residents and tourists of beach resorts in Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and
Tanzania. Completely devastated Banda Ache, Java.
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