The loudest sound in recorded history

On 27 August 1883, the volcano Krakatoa, between Java and Sumatra, blew apart in one of the most violent explosions ever recorded.

The blast was heard almost 5,000 kilometres away: on Rodrigues Island, near Mauritius, it was logged as "distant gunfire" and people went out looking for the ship. It remains the greatest distance at which a human being has heard a sound produced on Earth. Much closer, it was terrifying: 64 kilometres away, the captain of the Norham Castle wrote that half his crew's eardrums had burst and that he believed Judgement Day had come.

When the air stopped sounding, it kept pushing: the pressure wave circled the planet several times, and barometers across half the world recorded it passing up to seven times over five days.

For months, ash suspended in the atmosphere turned sunsets red across the entire world. For a while, the planet was the echo of an island that had ceased to exist.