0:01

Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History

0:03

Class from how Stuff Works dot com.

0:11

Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

0:13

I am Tracy and I'm

0:15

Holly Frying. So perhaps

0:18

you have heard of Mary Robinett Kal

0:20

maybe you're a listener to this podcast.

0:23

She has written, among other things, a

0:25

series of novels that are known as The Glamorous

0:28

Histories. And these are basically Jane Austen

0:30

novels with magic. So if that sounds

0:33

delightful to you and you have not read them,

0:35

you will probably be delighted because

0:38

they are pretty charming and touching

0:40

and funny. And the third one was

0:43

some of my most recent airplane reading

0:45

while I was on a

0:48

flight, and that book is called Without

0:50

a Summer. It's said in eighteen

0:52

sixteen, And in addition to several running

0:54

mentions of past podcast

0:57

subjects the Luddites, there's

0:59

ongoing this cussion about about

1:01

whether that year's unseasonably cold

1:03

weather is caused by magic. Basically,

1:06

so this is not unseasonably

1:09

cold like chillier than normal. It's

1:11

unseasonably cold like it's snowing

1:13

in July and all of the

1:15

crops have frozen in the ground.

1:18

So in spite of the similarities

1:21

and their names. I was so absorbed in

1:23

this book that it wasn't until the very

1:25

end that I made the connection that this unseasonably

1:28

called fictional setting is

1:30

the same as the real world event the

1:32

Year Without a Summer, which is

1:34

also a listener request from listener Cecile.

1:37

So Cecil, you can thank Mary

1:39

Robin at Koal for for bumping this

1:41

to the top of the list, because after

1:44

we landed, I was like, I

1:47

want to learn more about that and what really

1:49

happened. So

1:51

this story actually starts with a volcano.

1:54

And the volcano, which was Tambora on

1:57

the island of Simbawa, Indonesia, was

1:59

probably not the only factor in

2:01

eighteen sixteen of bizarre weather, and we'll

2:03

talk about that a little bit more later, but

2:05

it was definitely a very significant

2:08

major part of it, and it had immediate devastating

2:10

effects in Asia and the tropical Pacific,

2:13

and a lot of these are unfortunately really

2:15

glossed over when people talk about the Year Without

2:17

a Summer. There were

2:20

several major volcanic eruptions

2:22

in the early eighteen teens. One

2:25

was suffer Air on St. Vincent

2:27

Island in the Caribbean in eighteen twelve. Mount

2:30

Mayon and the Philippines erupted in eighteen

2:32

fourteen. And then there was an immense

2:35

explosion from Tambora which started

2:37

on April five, eighteen fifteen, and went

2:39

on for days, with the

2:41

worst of the eruption really getting

2:43

going on the tenth. And in

2:45

the memoir of Sir Stamford Raffles,

2:48

the British Lieutenant Governor of Java at the time,

2:50

quote, the first explosions

2:52

were heard on this island in the evening of

2:55

the fifth of April. They were noticed in every

2:57

quarter and continued at intervals

2:59

until the following day. The noise

3:01

was in the first instance almost

3:04

universally attributed to distant cannon,

3:06

so much so that a attachment of troops were

3:08

marched from Joke, Jakarta, in the expectation

3:11

that a neighboring post was attacked, and

3:13

along the coast boats were in two instances

3:16

dispatched in quest of a supposed ship

3:18

in distress. On the following

3:20

morning, however, a slight fall of ashes

3:22

removed all doubt as to the cause of the sound,

3:25

and he goes on to say that it sounded so close that

3:27

they really all believed it was a volcano. That

3:29

was actually much closer to them than Tambora.

3:33

When the eruptions started, eyewitnesses

3:36

on the island of Zimbabwa reported

3:38

three extremely tall, very

3:40

distinct columns of flame that came

3:43

up from the volcanoes crater, and

3:45

then they kind of crashed into one another

3:47

high up above it before cascading back

3:49

down. Stones that were

3:51

on average the size of a walnut

3:54

also rained down, along with

3:56

tons and tons of ash.

3:59

Also falling in the vicinity of the

4:01

mountain were trees and even animals

4:03

that had been on the upper slopes, which

4:05

were torn apart by the eruption.

4:09

The eruption of Tambora, in case you

4:11

could not surmise this from Tracy's description,

4:14

was huge. It was much bigger

4:16

and much deadlier than the far more well

4:19

known eruption of Krakatoa that happened

4:21

almost seventy years later. People

4:23

reported hearing it as far away as Sumatra,

4:25

which is more than a thousand miles away

4:28

from where it was happening. There

4:30

was also so much ash

4:32

in the air that it, was, according to

4:34

reports, dark for three

4:36

days or three hundred miles

4:39

around the volcano. After the eruption

4:41

peaked, the volcano itself

4:44

also got a lot shorter. It lost almost

4:46

a third of its pre eruption height,

4:49

dropping from four thousand, two hundred

4:51

to two thousand, eight hundred meters.

4:54

Not Surprisingly, the island of Simbabwa

4:57

was devastated. More than ten

4:59

tho Bill died in the eruption itself.

5:03

The entire island was covered

5:05

in ash, and this ash had

5:07

an average depth of between fifty and sixty

5:09

centimeters, so between twenty

5:11

and thirty of ash.

5:13

The ash was deeper the closer you got to the volcano,

5:16

and so much of it fell that buildings

5:19

collapsed under its weight, and

5:21

a two thousand four archaeological expedition

5:24

found a village that was buried under an

5:26

ash layer ten feet thick.

5:29

Ash spread to the north and northwest,

5:32

blanketing the sea and the neighboring islands.

5:35

British vessels reported patches of ash

5:37

in the sea around Indonesia that was

5:39

several feet deep and had to be essentially

5:42

plowed through. Two

5:44

of Zimbabwa's princedoms were completely

5:46

destroyed and their common languages

5:48

became extinct, and

5:51

the influx of volcanic material into

5:53

the ocean also spawned a tsunami

5:55

that struck other parts of the island as

5:57

well as neighboring islands, so that people

5:59

who had survived the initial eruption wound

6:01

up being killed in the tsunami. Afterward,

6:05

most of the crops in the surrounding area

6:07

were destroyed, and as

6:09

is so often the case when there's such a massive

6:11

natural disaster, famine

6:14

and disease spread and its wake,

6:16

including among livestock and wild

6:18

animals. People became

6:20

so hungry that they resorted to eating their horses,

6:23

which were working animals that were necessary

6:25

for transportation and for work. And

6:27

all of this wasn't limited just to

6:29

the island of Sumbawa. People in neighboring

6:32

islands starved to death as volcanic

6:34

ash killed their rice crops. There

6:37

was a massive migration to other

6:39

islands, and some of those islands could

6:41

not sustain the needs of all of these newcomers

6:44

that were causing their economies and their food

6:46

supplies to collapse, and

6:48

many of those islands were facing famines and

6:50

epidemics of their own in the wake of the volcano.

6:53

Bali and Lombach were particularly

6:55

hard hit. Estimates of the total

6:58

death toll in Indonesia are really very

7:00

but sources generally agree that

7:02

it was at least one hundred seventeen

7:05

thousand people who died in the

7:07

eruption and it's it's aftermath.

7:10

It took more than five years before crops

7:12

could be harvested again. On the most affected

7:14

parts of Sumbawa, recovery

7:16

was extremely slow to Government

7:19

officials wrote that the princedoms of Sumbawa

7:21

and Dambo were quote beginning to

7:23

recover in eighteen twenty

7:25

four, so we're talking about almost a decade

7:28

later. Other princedoms

7:30

were, in their words, still quote

7:32

a desolate heap of rubble. The

7:35

whole thing had an extremely long

7:37

lasting effect on the island's ecology.

7:40

You could probably even say that it was permanently

7:42

changed in places. Ash

7:44

made the ground more fertile, but it was also

7:46

drier, So Bali and Lombox

7:49

so neighboring islands wound up with really

7:52

bounciful rice harvests a few years later,

7:54

thanks to all the ash and the soil. But

7:56

on Sumbawa, the volcano in the ash

7:58

destroyed all the veted tatian, and

8:01

the streams and springs that the

8:03

vegetation had been sheltering consequently

8:05

dried up. So While the soil

8:08

was richer, it was also a lot drier, so

8:10

why it didn't get quite the same benefit as

8:12

some of the other outlying islands

8:15

did once it had started to

8:17

recover. The dust

8:20

from the ash spread around the world, caused

8:22

brilliant sunsets, and it also reaked

8:25

havoc with the weather over the following months.

8:27

In the US, dust in the air was reported

8:30

in the Washington, d c. Daily National

8:32

Intelligencer on May one,

8:34

eighteen sixteen, and in the Norfolk,

8:36

Virginia American Beacon on the ninth.

8:39

The editor of the Boston Columbia Sentinel

8:41

remarked that the sun itself seemed dimmer on

8:43

July fift which he thought was

8:46

because of sun spots, And while there

8:48

was a lot of sun spot activity, it was almost

8:50

certainly because of all of the ash in the atmosphere.

8:54

So we're going to talk about exactly

8:57

what that ash caused in terms

8:59

of the weather after a brief word from

9:01

a sponsor, and now

9:04

let's get back to the slightly less peppy

9:06

discussion of the year without a summer, So

9:09

to return to Tambora before we talk

9:11

about how this eruption affected

9:13

the weather in parts of the world. We have a couple

9:15

of caveats. One is

9:17

that the measurement and record

9:20

keeping related to weather statistics

9:22

have really improved dramatically in

9:24

the years since all of this happened. Most

9:26

of the places that we're talking about did not have any

9:28

sort of methodical pattern

9:31

of observing the weather and writing it down,

9:33

which is something we pretty much take for granted today.

9:36

So that means a lot of the records that we

9:38

have are erratic and subjective. But

9:41

there is a ton of documentation

9:43

overall in the historical record, in the form

9:45

of newspapers, letters, journals,

9:47

diaries, and other documents. So

9:50

there's so much of it that we know just

9:52

from that part uh that

9:55

this was a real event and not just somebody

9:58

overreacting about a cul snap.

10:01

Also, we have a lot of documentation

10:04

about eighteen sixteens, whether in North

10:06

America and Europe and parts of

10:08

Asia. But while it's

10:10

pretty logical to conclude that the weather

10:12

was completely weird everywhere as a consequence

10:14

of all of this volcanic activity,

10:17

we have much less in the way

10:19

of actual records from Africa, South America

10:21

and Australia. So when we walk through

10:24

what we know, it is mostly from North

10:26

American, European and Asian

10:28

points of view. In North America,

10:30

particularly on the east coast, stretching

10:32

from the Carolinas all the way up through

10:34

what's now Ontario and Quebec, the

10:37

spring of eighteen sixteen was overall cooler

10:40

and drier than normal, although there were

10:42

some big warm spells mixed

10:44

in. Temperatures kind of swung wildly

10:46

from balmy to freezing and back again.

10:50

Then the summer had three extreme

10:52

cold spells in June, July,

10:54

and August. The first huge

10:57

cold wave stretch from June five to June

10:59

eleven. Temperatures in New

11:01

England dropped from the eighties to the forties

11:03

in the wake of a thunderstorm, and that

11:05

actually became the high for the next several

11:07

days. Eighteen inches

11:10

of snow was reported in Cabot, Vermont

11:12

on the eighth, and a hard frost

11:14

that stretched well into the south on the eleventh

11:17

killed most of the crops that had managed to

11:19

survive up until that point. People

11:21

started to talk about the real possibility of

11:23

a famine. Within

11:25

weeks, New England temperatures were

11:28

really unseasonably hot again, breaking

11:30

one hundred in parts of Massachusetts,

11:33

which doesn't happen all that often, especially

11:35

not this early in the season. Another

11:38

four day cold snap hit eastern North America

11:40

starting on July six. In

11:42

this case, frosts killed the replanted

11:45

crops, although it was not as snowy this

11:47

time around. Most of the snow reported

11:49

in the U s was in the mountains of Vermont, but

11:52

further north in Montreal, bodies of water

11:54

completely froze over with a layer of ice. This

11:57

snap also reached even farther south

12:00

was in cold weather and frosts in places

12:02

that had escaped in the June wave.

12:06

The cold weather came back again on August

12:08

one, causing more snow in the Vermont

12:11

Mountains, along with frosts as far

12:13

south as North Carolina and as far

12:15

west as Kentucky and Ohio. Just

12:19

as alarming at this point was a drought which

12:22

had affected much of the southern and eastern

12:24

US, and it's estimated that up

12:26

to half of the cotton crop in the south

12:28

failed because of this dry weather. Grain

12:31

prices skyrocketed and the drought

12:33

didn't break until September, after the cold

12:35

weather was over, only to be about to

12:37

start again. Because it was heading into autumn.

12:40

The price of flour rose from four dollars

12:43

a barrel to between eleven and twenty

12:45

dollars per barrel. The wholesale

12:47

price of wheat nearly doubled, and the price

12:49

of virtually every food staple shot

12:52

up. There was also

12:54

a huge increase in migration of

12:56

farmers from the Eastern United States

12:58

into the West, as people hoped

13:00

that they would find better growing conditions

13:03

and because the West really hadn't seen the

13:05

kind of unseasonable cold that the

13:07

East Coast had. About twice

13:10

as many people decided to move west

13:12

that year, as was typical at

13:14

that point. In several

13:16

states, including New York, Virginia,

13:19

Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, people

13:21

called for a ban on distillery because

13:23

of the grain shortage. When people couldn't

13:25

afford grain to feed their livestock and

13:27

they're working animals, they ate the

13:29

animals instead. So

13:32

that was North America's eighteen sixteen

13:35

summer. In Europe, the summer

13:37

was similarly wintry,

13:40

but it also seemed like it got all the rain that

13:42

North America had been missing. Western

13:44

Europe was the most affected, but crops

13:46

failed all over the continent thanks to the

13:49

fields being flooded and later frozen.

13:52

Crops that are sensitive to having too much

13:54

water. Like wine, grapes really suffered

13:56

in their quality when they managed to survive.

13:59

Plus, all the incessant rain made things

14:01

generally wet and moldy. Because

14:04

horses were the main source of transportation

14:07

and grain became so much more expensive,

14:09

the cost of travel in Europe skyrocketed.

14:12

Famine spread in Switzerland

14:14

and Ireland. In Switzerland,

14:17

the government had to distribute information

14:19

about how to tell poisonous plants from ones

14:21

that were safe to eat as people try

14:23

to scavenge what they could from out in

14:25

the woods or the wilds. In

14:27

Ireland, a typhus epidemic spread

14:30

in the wake of the famine. The

14:32

story that sticks in a lot of people's minds about

14:34

how this played out in Europe is that

14:36

the infamous evening in which George

14:39

Gordon Lord Byron proposed that all

14:41

of his guests at his Lake Geneva villa

14:44

write a story. That's the visit

14:46

in which Mary Shelley wound up writing Frankenstein.

14:49

That all happened in the middle of this cold,

14:51

wretched summer, and

14:54

also written during this uh was

14:56

Byron's poem Darkness, and that

14:58

poem begins. I had a dream

15:00

which was not all a dream.

15:03

The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars

15:05

did wander darkling in the eternal space,

15:08

rayless and pathless, and the icy

15:10

earth swung blind and blackening in

15:12

the moonless air. Morn

15:14

came and went and came and brought

15:16

no day, and men forgot their

15:18

passions in the dread of this, their

15:20

desolation, and all hearts were

15:23

chilled to a selfish prayer for light

15:27

in Asia. Moving on to the

15:29

third big place that we have lots of information

15:31

about, the volcano disrupted

15:33

the monsoon cycle in India and

15:35

Korea, so things were dry when they were

15:37

supposed to be wet, and then way wetter

15:39

than they were supposed to be once the rain actually

15:42

arrived. This caused rice crops,

15:44

which really rely on that monsoon cycle,

15:46

to fail all over. The

15:49

change in the weather also affected which bacteria

15:51

could thrive in the Bay of Bengal, and

15:54

unfortunately, one species that did

15:56

thrive was a new strain of cholera,

15:58

which people had less resistance too than previous

16:00

strains. Bengal Colora

16:03

spread out of India to the rest of the world

16:05

in eighteen seventeen, and the strain

16:07

killed tens of millions of people. There's

16:10

actually some debate in the scientific community

16:12

about just how much of this shift had to do with

16:14

the volcano and Unon

16:16

province in southwestern China, crops

16:19

failed in the face of just a bitter bitter

16:21

cold and a much wetter season

16:24

than normal, and the book

16:26

Tambora, The Eruption That Changed the World,

16:28

author Gillan Darcy would connects

16:31

this and this massive crop failure

16:33

and famine to the rise of opium

16:36

growth in Union as farmers turned

16:38

to it in desperation is a way to

16:40

try to just make enough money to survive when

16:42

the rest of their crops had failed. A

16:45

huge famine swept through southwest

16:47

China and it lasted for years. Neighboring

16:50

parts of China had an influx of refugees,

16:53

and much of the nation faced a serious

16:55

social unrest. So

16:58

before we talk about some of the theories at

17:00

the time for what was going on, let's have

17:02

another pause for a word from a sponsor, and

17:05

now back to the year without

17:07

a summer. So, unsurprisingly,

17:10

there were many many explanations

17:12

at the time for what was going on and what was causing

17:14

this just bizarre weather. These

17:17

actually start with a story about

17:19

why the volcano erupted in the first

17:21

place. The population of Zimbabwe

17:24

was largely Muslim, and there was a

17:26

folk tale explaining the event, and

17:29

that was that a prince had fed a

17:31

devout Muslim a dog and then

17:33

killed him, and the volcanoes

17:35

eruption was an act of divine retribution

17:38

for that act. A range

17:40

of explanations for the weather cropped up in North

17:43

America and Europe as well. A

17:45

primary theory was sun spots. As we

17:47

mentioned briefly earlier, there were a number

17:49

of extremely large sun spots that year,

17:52

some of which were visible to the unaided

17:54

eye, and people thought these darker

17:56

areas of the sun were colder, which

17:58

is true, and a colder sun meant

18:00

colder weather. Not everyone was

18:02

on board with this idea, though, since the timing

18:05

of the sun spots did not always match up

18:07

with the coldest weather. There's

18:09

actually a lot of continued study

18:12

and discussion about exactly how much sun

18:14

spots can affect the Earth's weather and climate.

18:17

Uh And it's partly because this all

18:19

happens on such a huge scale,

18:22

and the sun spots cycle itself is

18:25

so long that it's almost impossible

18:27

to isolate just sun spots

18:29

from all of the other stuff in the world

18:31

that's going on while the sun spots

18:33

cycle is peaking. Yeah, you can't

18:35

really turn off the sun to get a control group

18:38

without it. Yeah, And you can't turn off

18:40

the volcanoes to study just the sun.

18:42

It's so I really tried to

18:44

find a definitive answer of good sun spots

18:46

I've been and that there's not a definitive answer.

18:49

Another theory at this time is

18:51

that it had something to do with ice in

18:54

North America. I seem to persist

18:56

in the Great Lakes for longer than normal, and

18:58

a number of ships for poorted huge ice

19:01

floes floating in the North Atlantic. People

19:03

thought that all of this ice was actually

19:06

sucking the heat out of the atmosphere. This

19:09

is really more of a cause and effects situation.

19:11

There was more ice on the Great Lakes because

19:13

it was colder than normal, uh,

19:16

But then there was more ice floating in the Northern

19:18

Atlantic because this whole time actually

19:21

caused a warming uh

19:23

trend over the poles, and so a lot

19:25

of polar ice broke up and floated

19:28

away, so that it was more

19:30

of a cause and effects situation than

19:32

the ice sucking the heat out of

19:34

the air. Also, a series

19:37

of pretty large earthquakes had struck

19:39

various points on the Earth in the eighteen

19:41

teens, and people also

19:44

blamed the weather on this. The idea

19:46

was that the Earth's motion had somehow

19:48

caused some kind of fluid

19:51

equilibrium between the surface of the Earth

19:53

and the atmosphere, and that until something

19:56

broke that equilibrium, that

19:58

there would not be enough war available

20:01

for crops to grow. Other

20:04

scapegoats that were named as the cause

20:06

of all of these problems Benjamin Franklin's

20:08

lightning rods. They were

20:10

stealing electricity and disrupting the weather,

20:12

because you know, he did invented them in

20:14

the mid seventeen hundreds, and they'd become more

20:17

commonplace since then. So clearly,

20:19

since that happened before the weather, it must have

20:21

caused this terrible weather. There's

20:24

so many explanations

20:26

sound yet there.

20:30

I mean, we still see this today when

20:32

people don't totally understand something, and they'll

20:34

feel like that because one thing happened

20:36

before another thing, that the first thing caused

20:38

the second thing, and it's

20:41

often not true at all, Right, It's

20:43

that like chronological causality

20:45

attribution that's not not

20:48

always valid. So

20:50

the prevailing theory today is that

20:52

the volcanic activity, including

20:55

that from Tambora and the other eruptions

20:57

that were mentioned at the top of the show, was it

20:59

lea one of the primary contributors. And this was

21:01

actually something that people did discuss a little

21:04

bit at the time. It was certainly not a widespread

21:06

theory, but there were people who were like, you know, maybe

21:08

all this ash in the atmosphere, which

21:10

is from a volcano is making

21:12

it colder. Like people are pretty smart that way.

21:15

Um. However, eighteen sixteen

21:17

was not the only year in

21:19

that time period that had weird

21:22

weather. In general, it was

21:24

colder than normal in a lot of places

21:26

from eighteen twelve to eighteen seventeen,

21:28

to the point that people took notice, and

21:31

by studying things like ice cores

21:33

and tree rings and that kind of long

21:35

term documentation that the earth

21:37

leaves of itself, scientists

21:40

know that this was not really

21:42

just a little five year window of a cold snap.

21:45

The eighteen hundred spell at the end of a

21:47

relative cool snap that lasted around

21:49

the world for almost five hundred years,

21:52

starting in fourteen hundred and ending

21:54

in around eighteen sixty at

21:57

least in the US. The year without

21:59

US Summer prompted people to start making more routine

22:02

observances and recordings of weather

22:04

conditions. The Commissioner

22:06

General of the Land Office, Josiah

22:09

Meggs, sent out a memo to all of his

22:11

registers at twenty different land offices

22:13

instructing them to make and record a number

22:16

of observations about everything from the weather

22:18

to animal migrations. The

22:20

military also started making and recording

22:22

weather observations at the direction of Joseph

22:24

Lovell, the Surgeon General of the Army,

22:27

and the Patent Office and the Smithsonian Institution

22:30

got in on the action as well, and consequently,

22:32

the first published weather forecasts came

22:34

out in the US in eighteen forty nine.

22:37

So when I started researching this episode,

22:39

I kind of expected it to be a little bit like

22:41

The Long Winter Part two. So

22:44

we talked about the Long Winter, which

22:46

Laura Angeles Wilder wrote about last

22:49

time about this time of year, and that was

22:52

the weather was really cold, things were really hard.

22:55

Uh, things were tough, but overall

22:57

everything worked out okay for the most part.

23:00

And I sort of thought this was going to be similar to

23:02

that. Uh.

23:05

I was not expecting all of

23:07

the famines and deaths and

23:09

the extreme scale of how deadly

23:12

the volcano was a

23:14

lot of um. Like a lot

23:16

of people who have written to suggest the topic or other

23:19

things that I've seen about it, kind of go this was a year

23:21

that had terrible weather, a

23:24

volcano caused it, and the that's

23:26

sort of all that said about the volcano, as

23:28

though the volcano was on an island

23:30

that was totally uninhabited, right,

23:34

uh, and that is not the

23:36

case at all. This episode

23:39

gives me um flashbacks

23:41

to when I was a kid in Mount Saint Helen's erupted

23:43

because I lived in Washington State at the time, so

23:46

I am very familiar with being covered with ash.

23:49

Yeah, I've never lived near

23:51

an active volcano, so I have not had that

23:53

experience. Those are wild times.

23:56

I remember my biggest concern, and again I was a child

23:58

at the time, so my biggest concern was

24:00

that all the animals have been killed. I was really upset

24:02

about the animals that may have lost

24:05

our lives, even though probably most

24:07

of them fled before the activity actually

24:09

started. I'm sure some still lost

24:11

our lives, but that was my big focus as a child.

24:14

I did not care that there was crap all over everything

24:16

we owned and like a half inch

24:18

of ash sitting everywhere. I was like, what about the

24:20

deer? I was really that

24:22

was my focus? Wow.

24:26

So uh, I have some listener

24:28

mail that is cheerier than this episode.

24:32

I actually actually have two pieces. This is we

24:34

are recording this episode as literally

24:36

one of the last things before for

24:39

the holidays, and it's gonna be a while

24:41

before it's my turn for listener mails. So I'm doubling

24:43

up today so that things don't get overlooked

24:46

later on. Uh. They are both

24:48

about our episode about the Gnomes Theorem

24:50

run. And this person was from Karen.

24:53

Karen says, I listened to your podcasts during

24:55

the hundreds of hours literally that I

24:57

spend on the trails training my long

25:00

distance dog team.

25:02

I am not making that up. I

25:05

love that me too.

25:08

Imagine my delight today to queue up

25:10

your Wednesday podcast and find it on a

25:12

subject near and dear to my heart, the

25:14

Serum run. See. I have competed

25:17

in the Iditarod Trail sled dog race

25:19

eleven times. I have

25:21

run dogs through Nanana, up the Yukon

25:23

River, through Nulatto, across the very

25:26

intimidating Norton Sound and into Gnome.

25:29

Each of my pure bred Siberian Huskies can

25:31

trace their roots back to dogs on Sappala's

25:33

Serum run team, which was Togo,

25:35

who we talked about in the episode. I

25:38

just wanted to let you know that I thought you did a very excellent

25:40

job of covering the subject. The pronunciations

25:42

you were worried about were spot on, and

25:44

you did a more accurate job with the subject than

25:46

about anyone I've heard. Well done. Oh

25:49

and I wanted to say that you are right minus

25:51

fifty is ridiculously cold,

25:54

and sled dogs are indeed amazing,

25:56

the most amazing creatures on the planet if you

25:59

ask me. I've running dogs for over

26:01

twenty years and they still amazed me every

26:03

day. Sincerely, Karen, and

26:06

then I'm going to read another one. This

26:09

one is from Marie, and Marie says,

26:11

it was positively delightful to see some Alaskan

26:14

history pop up in my podcast this morning. Even

26:16

if it isn't an event I missed in history

26:18

class, it was still an interesting listen.

26:21

I won't lie. Part of the fund was listening

26:23

to you both try really hard to say incredibly

26:25

difficult Alaskan words correctly. I'm

26:27

not surprised you could not find any pronunciation

26:30

guides online. I am a lifelong

26:32

Alaskan. My father was born in Anchorage

26:35

before Alaska became a state, and wonder

26:37

sometimes if the difficult names are purposeful

26:39

to point out who uh, to point

26:41

out those who have not lived here.

26:44

I wanted to say thank you for talking about how important

26:46

dogs and dogs letting are to the history of Alaska

26:49

and its current culture. So many outside

26:51

the state it is difficult to comprehend the

26:54

vastness and sheer impassibility of

26:56

a lot of the terrain, particularly

26:58

north of the Bricks Range. To give you an

27:00

idea of the distances involved, Nome

27:02

is just over five hundred air miles

27:04

from Anchorage. That is roughly the

27:06

same distance from as from Atlanta,

27:08

Georgia to Pittsburgh, Washington,

27:11

d C. And Chicago. I say

27:13

air miles because that is the most common way to

27:15

get to know It is not connected to the Alaska

27:17

Highway system and does not have a ferry service.

27:20

The Iditarod Race, which you reference in the

27:22

podcast, is about a thousand miles,

27:24

give or take a few dozen, depending on checkpoint

27:26

locations. Even if this were

27:28

an actual highway, it would be the equivalent

27:30

of driving from Montreal, Canada to Atlanta

27:33

Georgia. That's about twenty one hours of driving,

27:35

according to travel math dot com.

27:38

I do want to say a word of caution that I hope

27:40

is out to your listeners. Sled dogs are

27:42

amazing creatures and incredible athletes.

27:45

They are bread to work hard in cold weather,

27:47

have remarkable endurance, and the ability

27:50

to persevere in circumstances that most

27:52

animals would block out. These

27:54

same qualities mean that they are not always suited

27:56

to be pets. While many breeds do make

27:59

good pets, it is in important with any working

28:01

breed of dog to consider the traits that make them

28:03

special also make them challenging.

28:06

A dog bread for cold weather is not as well

28:08

suited to a hot climate. Dog spread

28:10

to run long distances can become hyperactive

28:12

when you confined to a yard. As amazing

28:15

as these animals are, please consider carefully

28:17

before bringing one into your home. Not

28:20

every house or family is suited

28:22

to an animal that is the canine equivalent

28:24

of a an Olympic athlete. Thanks

28:27

for your knowledge and keep up the good work. Marie. Thank

28:31

you so much. Karen and Marie. I love

28:33

both of those email an I love

28:35

them both so much too, and I do want to have kind

28:37

of a full disclosure. They both said

28:39

that we did a good job on saying things other people

28:42

have said that we did not do a good job. Um,

28:44

I pronounced Nanana as Nanana

28:46

again because we've gotten three different

28:50

pronunciations. Yeah,

28:54

yeah, yeah, I think I said Nanana

28:57

in the show, and we've heard Nanana, Nana,

29:00

and Nanana. I don't know which

29:03

is the right one. So um.

29:06

This is the case with many things that we

29:08

try to say correctly in the show. So

29:11

uh, I just want to talk about dogs

29:14

somewhere. If you would like to write

29:16

to us about this or any other podcast, you

29:18

can. We're at History Podcast at how stuff

29:20

works dot com. We're also on Facebook, Facebook

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29:25

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29:27

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29:29

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29:31

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29:35

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29:37

If you would like to learn more about what we talked about

29:40

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29:42

which is how stuff works dot com. You

29:44

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29:46

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29:48

Volcanoes Work. You can also

29:50

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29:53

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29:55

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29:57

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30:00

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30:02

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30:04

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30:06

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30:14

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