A quiz question · medium
The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa produced what is still the loudest sound in recorded human history. The chief of police on Rodrigues Island reported what he thought was distant gunfire. How far away from Krakatoa was he?
Rodrigues Island is east of Madagascar, in the western Indian Ocean — about 4,800 km from the Sunda Strait. The sound reached him four hours after the eruption (sound travels approximately 1,200 km/h). The blast also produced a barometric pressure wave that circled the Earth three and a half times and was detected on weather-station barographs everywhere from London to Boston. Northern Australia, Singapore, and Cape Town all heard reports of the event but at lower volumes or none.
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The Loudest Sound Ever Heard On a Monday morning in August 1883, a volcano in the Sunda Strait made a noise that was registered, four thousand eight hundred kilometers away, as gunfire.
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