Alastair Dawson , Author provided Impact on weather The eruptions of 1783 were ten times the size of Iceland’s 2010 volcanic eruption, which led to an aviation shutdown across Europe. Perhaps one of Laki's most pernicious and poorly understood effects at the time of its eruption was the cloud of toxic gases that it emitted. In America the Mississippi reportedly froze at New Orleans. That thought must have grown even stronger in the intervening months, when the volcano led to a series of famines, a toxic fog, and talk of nothing less than Doomsday itself. But, people living near volcanoes might suffer from overdoses of fluoride, which can have similar skeletal and dental effects to what was suffered by Icelanders and their livestock in the 18th century. Per the Smithsonian Institution, not only does the volcano throw out lava and ash, but it also sits beneath a thick layer of ice, meaning that sudden floods from melted glaciers are a very real hazard in the area. Though some people were at a loss to explain the calamitous events of Laki's eruption and the terrible years that followed, other, more scientific minds began to realize that there might be a deeper connection there, after all. Haze from the eruption was reported from Iceland to Syria. The remainder was owned by the nobility (25 per cent), bourgeoisie(25 per cent) and the church (10 per cent), who distributed it as tenancies. And, armed with less scientific information about these geological beasts, many wondered if an eruption was akin to divine judgment. According to Environmental Health Management and Prevention Practices, fluoride can be beneficial in small doses — consider the presence of fluoride in dental treatments and municipal water supplies, which help to keep people's teeth strong and resistant to cavities. The combined effects of the fluorosis and sulfuric acid in the air, combined with the poor forage, meant that over half of all livestock in Iceland died soon after the eruption. He also wondered if meteors or other space phenomena might have something to do with the haze and the subsequent cold winter. With so many scientists and other scholars buzzing about the events of 1783 and 1784, it's no wonder that one of the most famous minds of the age would eventually get involved. Laki spewed up 15 cubic kilometres of lava in total, the third biggest lava eruption since the end of the last Ice Age. French Jews, and later Jews in some other countries influenced by France, were one of the beneficiaries of the French Revolution, for reasons such as the associated removal of previous restrictions on Jews/Judaism, sometimes referred to as Jewish emancipation. It has been suggested that the subsequent crop failures and food shortages were contributing causes of the French Revolution. As he wrote in The Natural History of Selborne, the year 1783 was "amazing and portentous" in part because of the "peculiar haze" that troubled the village and made the sun look apocalyptically red. On June 8, 1783 the Laki eruption (Skaftáreldar in Icelandic) of the Grímsvötn volcanic system commenced when a fissure segment opened by the hillock Hnúta about 13 km southwest of … Given that high-stakes food insecurity was a major factor leading up to the revolution, it's very possible that Laki and its cloud of plant-destroying sulfur dioxide had more to do with the eventual revolution than someone like notorious revolution leader Robespierre or his followers could have imagined. Though it didn't have the same immediate explosiveness of other volcanoes like the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in what's now Indonesia, the 1783 Laki eruption remains one of the most impressive and devastating volcanic events in recorded history. Surely, no one would have blamed Jón Steingrímsson if he had fled. Iceland's Laki volcano began erupting on June 8, 1783, and continued doing so for months, causing a major environmental disaster. This event is rated as 4 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, but the eight-month emission of sulfuric aerosols resulted in one of the most important climatic and socially repercussive events of the last millennium. As quoted in GeoBritannica, he wrote that the frost had landed in his garden "exactly as if a fire had been lighted near them, that had shrivelled and discoloured their leaves.". For both this act and his gripping historical record of the Laki eruption and its aftereffects, Jón became legendary. Laki, like many volcanoes, spewed forth sulfur dioxide. The event has also been referred to as the Fires of the River Skaftá. The time the 1780s rolled around, France: Years of bad harvests in France during the hazy weeks June... Been thinking of such in 1783, after the haze and the other on the exact type eruption... 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