Creative History

  “I believe the Frost was greater (if not more universal also) than any other within the modern memory of man.”  The words of Anglican clergyman William Derham when describing the winter of 1709 as he witnessed it in London. William Derham was both a minister and a natural scientist who lived in a suburb of London over three hundred years ago at a time when religion and science weren’t necessarily constantly at war with one another.  Today, Derham is best remembered as the person who first came up with an accurate way to measure the speed of sound, but while he was alive, in addition to giving thundering sermons from the church pulpit, Derham was also an enthusiastic meteorologist who kept detailed records of weather conditions and who beginning in 1697 and stretching all the way to 1735 religiously recorded the temperature several times a day--no pun intended. One such day when William Derham recorded the temperature was January 5, 1709, and on that day, he recorded...

  The Vicar stands at the pulpit and addresses the packed congregation inside the cathedral.  It is sweltering.  The midsummer sun beats down on the stained glass windows.  Many, early on that Sunday morning, nearly swoon from the heat.  Already, just a few hours past dawn, the temperature has risen well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. He reads, in Latin, from the Book of Deuteronomy: “Take heed to yourselves that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; And then the LORD’s wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heavens, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you.” -Deuteronomy 11:17-18 KJV All across Europe that Sunday in July of 1540 this scene repeats itself.  In churches, Protestant and Catholic, Vicars, Priests, Reverends and Christian holy men of all sorts and denominations read from scripture and l...

  “And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward Heaven that there may be darkness over the land…even darkness which may be felt.”  EXODUS 10: 21 KJV “The sun gave forth its light without any brightness, like the moon, during the whole year.” So goes the account, not from the Plagues of Egypt as recounted in the Biblical Book of Exodus , but from the personal correspondence of the famed 6th century Byzantine Historian Procopius. Procopius was the right hand man to the Emperor Justinian.  He was the principal historian for all of Byzantium in the early middle ages, known for his erudition, learning and literary style.  Today, Procopius is most famous for his work entitled History of the Wars which is a voluminous series of histories that deals primarily with Byzantium’s struggles against the neighboring Sassanid Persian Empire. When Procopius gave his account of the darkened sun he was writing specifically about the year 536 A.D.  The year 5...

The Babad Lombok is an 800 year old chronicle written on palm leaves by the indigenous peoples of the Indonesian island of Lombok. Today the island of Lombok is home to over three million people.  Lombok’s prime tropical location makes the remote volcanic island one of Indonesia’s most popular tourist destinations. However, nearly eight centuries ago, in the year 1257, the tropical paradise of Lombok was the site of one of the most powerful and destructive volcanic eruptions in recorded history--the eruption of Mount Samalas. The Babad Lombok  Scientists believe that the Samalas eruption may have registered as a 7 on the modern day Volcanic Explosivity Index, or VEI, which would make Samalas the most powerful eruption in the past 12 millenia. In an instant, sometime most probably in the autumn of 1257, ten square miles of the top of Mount Samalas literally exploded and shot as high as twenty-five miles into the sky.  Ash from the 1257 eruption of the Samalas volca...