The Solar Storm That Made Telegraphs Work WITHOUT Electricity

Added: 2026-06-03

[00:00:00]September 1st, 1859. The sun exploded.

[00:00:04]Well, not literally, but the biggest solar storm in history hit Earth.

[00:00:08]Telegraph operators around the world got the shock of their lives, literally.

[00:00:12]Electric currents surged through the wires.

[00:00:14]>> [music] >> Operators were thrown from their chairs.

[00:00:16]Telegraph offices caught fire. But here's the weird part. Some telegraph lines kept working without any power [music] source. The atmosphere itself was so charged with electricity that messages traveled across continents using nothing but solar energy.

[00:00:30]Meanwhile, the northern lights appeared in places they'd never been seen. Cuba, Jamaica, >> [music] >> the Caribbean. People in Boston could read newspapers by the light of the aurora. This is a real newspaper report [music] from that day. Insert historical newspaper clipping about the Carrington event. The Carrington event proved something terrifying. Our technology is completely helpless against the sun's fury. If this happened today, satellites would fail. Power grids would collapse.

[00:00:55][music] The internet would vanish. All from a star 93 million miles away. Follow for more crazy history.