On August 27, 1883, the volcanic island of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait burst in one of the most violent cataclysms in recorded history. The final catastrophe produced a detonation estimated at 200 megatons of TNT, roughly four thousand times more powerful than the Tsar Bomba nuclear device. The sound was so immense that it was heard clearly 3,000 miles away on Rodrigues Island in the Indian Ocean, making it the loudest sound ever documented on Earth.
However, the most astounding aspect of the explosion was its atmospheric shockwave. The pressure wave roared through the atmosphere at over 700 miles per hour, circling the entire globe four times in one direction and three times in the reverse, for a total of seven complete circuits before dissipating six days later. Worldwide, sensitive barometers bounced frantically as the pressure pulse passed overhead.
In London, gasometers fluctuated wildly with each passage of the wave. The eruption blasted over eleven cubic miles of rock, ash, and pumice into the stratosphere, lowering global temperatures by up to 1. 2 degrees Celsius for years and creating brilliant, unnatural red sunsets worldwide.
The shockwave also generated a massive tsunami over 120 feet high that destroyed hundreds of coastal villages, providing the world with its first real-time global news event via newly laid undersea telegraph cables.