4 stories from this place.
The 1815 Tambora eruption destroyed the small Sumbawan kingdom of Tambora and killed its entire population of approximately 12,000 people. The Tambora language — a Papuan rather than Austronesian tongue, unrelated to all other documented Indonesian languages — died with them. Only a 48-word vocabulary survives.
Read the story →Stamford Raffles spent a decade governing Java, founded Singapore, and was the most important English Asianist of his generation. He lost his Sumatran governorship, his fortune, four of his five children, and most of his collection in a single bad year.
Read the story →Tambora killed more people than Krakatoa, cooled the planet for two years, and started the Year Without a Summer. The Western press barely noticed.
Read the story →In June 1816 it rained for a month at Lake Geneva. Five English visitors were stuck indoors. One of them was eighteen years old, and she had a dream.
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