26 August

On this day in 1946 George Orwell  published his novel "Animal Farm". In an unrelated event more than 5 centuries earlier - in 1429 – Joan of Arc made a triumphant entry into Paris. 

Today is the anniversary of the opening of the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg. There were 60 000 delegates from 174 countries. Thirty years earlier  in 1972  another big event opened:  the 20th Olympic Games in Munich, West Germany.  These were the Games during which a terrorist attack killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches, and a West German police officer, while five terrorists also died. But the Games continued and Mark Spitz famously won seven medals in swimming events. The 1969 movie title had it wrong  - the island is/was in fact  to the West of Java.  A few days ago, I mentioned the big disaster caused when Vesuvius erupted in 79. Anak Krakatau Eighteen centuries later, between 26 and 27 August 1883, the volcano on Krakatoa erupted in a series of major explosions, destroying almost all of the island itself. It had been  been stirring and erupting for months before that, but nobody could  predict the final cataclysmic explosion on 27 August. The sound is believed to be the loudest ever heard by modern man and was audible at a distance of up to more than 4 500 km from Krakatoa, which was situated between Java and Sumatra in what is today known as Indonesia.  Most of the 36 000 people killed as a result, were victims of tsunami caused by the explosion.   As had been predicted by volcanologists, in 1927 a new volcanic island, Anak Krakatau ('Child of Krakatoa') rose from the sea in the area where Krakatoa had been.  It disappeared after a while, but arose again and an eruption in 1930 produced one that stayed above water and has been steadily growing.