The Eruption of Krakatoa in 1883

If this interests you, then you might like to check out Samalas eruption.

Krakatoa eruption has a Volcanic Explosivity Index(VEI) of 6, 1257 Samalas eruption[1] has VEI of 7 apart from massive death toll, the resulting ecological disaster is now expected to have played a major role in ending the Mongol empire and collapsing several others in Asia. Severe droughts, famine followed up by extraordinary rains during this period has been recorded throughout the world.

I personally believe that's what lead to the end of Chola Dynasty(A Tamil empire spanning Southern India and SE Asia from 3rd BCE to 1279 CE)[2]. Although academic texts generally attribute to the end of Chola empire to the victory of long rival Pandya empire in wars, it's a common knowledge among Tamil people that it was drought induced famine[3] which ended the Chola and such famines generally do give an edge to the rival empires leading up to wars.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1257_Samalas_eruption

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chola_dynasty

[3]https://www.jstor.org/stable/44140197

Like many kids, I learned about Krakatoa from William Pene du Bois' 1948 Newbery Award-winning YA novel "The Twenty-One Balloons" [0]. The story is about a fantastical steampunk civilization hidden on Krakatoa, which (spoiler) is eventually destroyed in the eruption. The book is an absolute trip , figuratively and literally - recommended for all ages!

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Twenty-One-Balloons-Puffin-Modern-Cla...

Great book that came out about 15 years ago about this "Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883" [1]

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25017.Krakatoa

There's a nice In Our Time episode on this, "1816, the year without a summer":

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b077j4yv

>Summer temperatures in the northern hemisphere fell by an average of 0.4 °C (0.72 °F) in the year following the eruption.

Hmm... This could be useful for fighting climate change! What if we artificially triggered an eruption in the Yellowstone caldera? Maybe a few hydrogen bombs at the right locations could weaken the crust enough to trigger a huge eruption, which would lower global temperatures for a few years.