1So, Michelle, shall we make a start on our presentation?
2We haven't got that much time left.
3No, Adam.
4But at least we've done all the background reading.
5I found it really interesting.
6I'd never even heard of the Laki eruption before this.
7Me neither.
8I suppose 1783 is a long time ago.
9But it was a huge eruption
10and it had such devastating consequences.
11I know.
12It was great there were so many primary sources to look at.
13It really gives you a sense of how catastrophic the volcano was.
14People were really trying to make sense of the science for the first time.
15That's right.
16But what I found more significant was how it impacted directly and indirectly on political events,
17as well as having massive social and economic consequences.
18I know.
19That should be the main focus of our presentation.
20The observations made by people at the time were interesting, weren't they?
21I mean, they all gave a pretty consistent account of what happened,
22even if they didn't always use the same terminology.
23Yeah.
24I was surprised there were so many weather stations established by that time,
25so, you know, you can see how the weather changed, often by the hour.
26Right.
27Writers at the time talked about the Laki haze to describe the volcanic fog that spread across Europe.
28They all realised that this wasn't the sort of fog they were used to,
29and of course this was in pre-industrial times,
30so they hadn't experienced sulphur-smelling fog before.
31No, that's true.
32Reports from the period blamed the haze for an increase in headaches,
33respiratory issues and asthma attacks.
34And they all describe how it covered the sun and made it look a strange red colour.
35Must have been very weird.
36It's interesting that Benjamin Franklin wrote about the haze.
37Did you read that?
38He was the American ambassador in Paris at the time.
39Yeah.
40At first no one realised that the haze was caused by the volcanic eruption in Iceland.
41It was Benjamin Franklin who realised that before anyone else.
42He's often credited with that, apparently.
43But a French naturalist beat him to it. I can't remember his name.
44I'd have to look it up.
45Then other naturalists had the same idea,
46all independently of each other.
47Oh right.
48We should talk about the immediate impact of the eruption, which was obviously enormous,
49especially in Iceland, where so many people died.
50You'd expect that.
51And the fact that the volcanic ash drifted so swiftly
52but not that the effects would go on for so long.
53Or that two years after the eruption,
54strange weather events were being reported as far away as North America and North Africa.
55No.
56I found all that hard to believe too.
57It must have been terrible
58and there was nothing anyone could do about it,
59even if they knew the ash cloud was coming in their direction.
60We should run through some of the terrible consequences of the eruption experienced in different countries.
61There's quite a varied range.
62Starting with Iceland, where the impact on farming was devastating.
63One of the most dramatic things there was the effect on livestock as they grazed in the fields.
64They were poisoned because they ate vegetation that had been contaminated with fluorine
65as a result of the volcanic fallout.
66That was horrible.
67In Egypt, the bizarre weather patterns led to a severe drought
68and as a result the Nile didn't flood,
69which meant the crops all failed.
70It's so far from where the eruption happened
71and yet the famine there led to more people dying than any other country.
72It was worse than the plague.
73OK.
74Then in the UK the mortality rate went up a lot, presumably from respiratory illnesses.
75According to one report it was about double the usual number
76and included an unusually high percentage of people under the age of 25.
77I think people will be surprised to hear that the weather in the USA was badly affected too.
78George Washington even makes a note in his diary that they were snowbound until March in Virginia.
79That was before he became president.
80Yes, and there was ice floating down the Mississippi, which was unprecedented.
81Astonishing, really.
82Anyway, what do you think...