4 stories from this century.
In 1257 an Indonesian volcano called Samalas erupted with the largest eruption of the last seven thousand years. The sulphate signal appears in polar ice cores from both Greenland and Antarctica. Medieval European chronicles record the cold summer of 1258. It took until 2013 to identify the source.
Read the story →The Tyburn gallows at the western edge of medieval London were the main public execution site for the English crown from 1196 to 1783. About sixty thousand people died there. The site is now a traffic junction at Marble Arch, with a plaque almost nobody reads.
Read the story →In 1274 and again in 1281, Kublai Khan sent invasion fleets against Japan. Both times — once after a single battle and once after seven weeks of fighting — typhoons destroyed the Mongol ships. The Japanese called the wind divine.
Read the story →Old London Bridge stood for six hundred years, carried houses and shops on its back, and dammed the river so completely that the Thames froze upstream. When they tore it down in 1831 the river never froze again.
Read the story →