RSS Feed19th Century Disasters! Read all about it!
May 10, 2005
In case you feel that our present age is especially cursed with mayhem, disasters and the like, you are invited to dispel this notion by checking out two new books in our Relax and Read collection. They are Krakatoa: the Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester and Firestorm at Peshtigo: a Town, it's People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History by William Lutz and Deneise Gess.
On August 27th, 1883, the Indonesian island of Krakatoa exploded off the face of the Earth with explosions that were heard thousands of miles away. 40,000 were killed by tsunamis; villages that were not swept away, were buried under hot ash. It is also the authors contention that the Dutch abandonment of the colony after the disaster led survivors to seek comfort in radical Islam.
On October 8th, 1871, the same night as the Chicago Fire, as every Wisconsin schoolchild leans in grade school, the town of Peshtigo and it's environs burned to the ground in a freakish convergence of drought, tornado like winds and forest fires to create the worst fire in American history - with greater loss of life and property than the Chicago Fire.
Chilling reads, both of them.
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