Q 01/05

What nickname did 1816 earn after Mount Tambora's ash and gases chilled Europe and North America?

A) The Great Frost

B) Year Without a Summer

C) The Winter of Discontent

D) The Hungry Forties

Answer · why

B) Year Without a Summer

Year Without a Summer described the second-coldest year in the Northern Hemisphere since about 1400. Average global temperatures fell by roughly half ...

Q 02/05

Which Gothic novel grew from a ghost-story contest in the stormy summer after Mount Tambora erupted?

A) Jane Eyre

B) Wuthering Heights

C) Northanger Abbey

D) Frankenstein

Answer · why

D) Frankenstein

Frankenstein took shape when incessant rain kept the 18-year-old Mary Shelley and her friends inside a villa near Geneva for days in June 1816.

Q 03/05

Which invention is linked to Mount Tambora, after failed 1816 harvests left Europe's horses unfed?

A) The bicycle

B) The steam locomotive

C) The hot-air balloon

D) The electric telegraph

Answer · why

A) The bicycle

The bicycle descends from the two-wheeled running machine Karl Drais built in 1817, possibly because oats had become too scarce to keep horses fed.

Q 04/05

Heard 2,600 km away on Sumatra, Mount Tambora's 1815 explosions were first mistaken for what?

A) Thunder

B) Gunfire

C) Earthquakes

D) Landslides

Answer · why

B) Gunfire

Gunfire was the first guess on Sumatra, and later analysis suggests the blasts may have carried more than 3,350 km to Thailand and Laos.

Q 05/05

By one leading estimate, what killed most of Mount Tambora's victims in 1815 and the months after?

A) Pyroclastic flows and surges

B) Coastal tsunami waves

C) Starvation and epidemics

D) Ash-collapsed roofs

Answer · why

C) Starvation and epidemics

Starvation and epidemics took about 49,000 lives, against roughly 11,000 lost to the eruption itself, because ash burned and smothered the region's cr...