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Comment by jvm___ | Hacker News Reader

The Carrington event where a solar flare turned telegraph wires into those electromagnetd you build in elementary school. The current from the storm electrified all the telegraph cables. This would be bad for anything we've built that has a long cable run...

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGh...

Or how 536 was the worst year on record (and no one really knows why)

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGh...

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> Or how 536 was the worst year on record

Although I didn't listen to the 11 minute podcast, I was curious to know basically what it was about. This is what Wikipedia says about year 536:

"In 2018, medieval scholar Michael McCormick nominated 536 as 'the worst year to be alive' because of the extreme weather events probably caused by a volcanic eruption early in the year, causing average temperatures in Europe and China to decline and resulting in crop failures and famine for well over a year. Other researchers have noted additional adverse events during the year, including a mysterious fog, possibly due to the volcanic eruption."[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/536

A single source of quote, and I really doubt we can find anything related in recorded history. The history books of China definitely didn't mention anything significant about year 536.

They should, a global darkening of the skies due to an unknown volcano or volcanoes (or something else that spewed massive amounts of dust into the atmosphere).

There’s a solid amount evidence showing that there was some kind of abnormal volcanic winter in 536.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter_of_536

Whether it was “the worst year in history” is probably tough to quantify and prove, though.

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