The 1816 Year Without a Summer, the Tambora eruption and a theory about the bicycle

Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death, or The Year Without a Summer: such is the name under which 1816 entered history, when snow fell every month in Western Europe and parts of the USA, temperatures stayed at winter levels, and rain and hail never ceased. A century later, climatologists explained the phenomenon by the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history, that of Mount Tambora in Indonesia. Some hold that the weather of 1810-1819, the coldest decade in 500 years, may even have prompted the invention of the bicycle, owing to a shortfall in the production of oats, the staple of the horse's diet.

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

In the finale of the Strugatskys' Roadside Picnic, the Golden Ball is told: "Happiness for everybody, free, and let nobody go away unsatisfied!" I do not promise to offend nobody, but the digest really does come free of charge. So, here is the main business of the

Frederic Leighton

Frederic Leighton. “Daedalus and Icarus”, 1869 Daedalus warns his son not to climb too high: the heat of the sun may melt the wax, but Icarus is already gazing into the distance, and the lamentations of a foolish old man interest him not in the least

The 1816 Year Without a Summer, the Tambora eruption and a theory about the bicycle

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September digest: archaeological finds, exhibitions, museums, theatre and the Church

Frederic Leighton

Attempts to resolve the problems of many years of uncontrolled mass migration

Characters from Gogol's "Petersburg Tales" on the pedestal of the monument to Nikolai Gogol on Nikitsky Boulevard, photograph of the 1960s