A mountain ripped open on 10 April 1815 — and the year after, the world shivered. On that day Mount Tambora, on Sumbawa Island in the Dutch East Indies, erupted with a force rarely seen in recorded history. The blast reached the stratosphere, ejecting enormous volumes of ash, pumice and sulfurous gases in an event now classified at the upper end of the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI-7). The summit was dramatically altered; local landscapes were buried, villages obliterated, and the immediate ef