In 1815, Mount Tambora erupted.
To give you a sense of its scale, it was 100x the size of the Mount Vesuvius eruption that wiped out the city of Pompeii in AD 79.
Tambora flung sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere which oxidised to form tiny sulphate aerosols that covered the earth. Sunlight couldn’t get through, and global temperatures lowered by 0.4-0.7 degrees Celsius. This led to widespread agricultural disaster and major food shortages.
So how does this relate to Frankenstein?
Mary Shelley and her family, disappointed by the gloomy “year without a summer”, opted to pass the time indoors. They read German ghost stories to each other, and when they ran out of material, they started to make up their own stories.
Out of that dark and uncharacteristic summer, came an uncharacteristic tale of a human corpse re-animated—one that still influences pop culture til this day.
There is no deeper lesson or idea here, I just enjoyed learning about how a natural disaster on one side of the planet could lead to a story that has captured our imagination for more than 200 years. And I thought you might like it too.