A Volcano Created Frankenstein — And Killed Summer for a Year

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]In April 1815, a volcano on the island of Sumbawa erupted with a force the world had never recorded.

[00:00:08]Mount Tambora was heard over 2,000 km away.

[00:00:12]Within days, more than 70,000 people were dead.

[00:00:15]But the true devastation had only just begun.

[00:00:19]Tambora ejected so much ash into the atmosphere that [music] it blocked sunlight across the entire planet.

[00:00:26]Temperatures dropped. Crops >> [music] >> failed.

[00:00:29]1816 became known as the year without [music] a summer.

[00:00:34]Famine swept Europe, North America, and Asia.

[00:00:38]Hundreds of [music] thousands more died of starvation.

[00:00:42]That same summer in Geneva, a young writer [music] trapped indoors by relentless cold and rain began writing a story about a monster in a dying world.

[00:00:51]She called it Frankenstein. [music] One volcano, one eruption, and a world that would never [music] look the same again.