In India and surrounding provinces, in the autumn of 1883 and for many years afterward, there occurred brilliant sunsets of unusual color, green suns, and blue moons.
The general idea of a blue moon is the second full moon that occurs in the same month; i.e. the second full moon that occurs in the month of March, perhaps. However, this is not the phenomenon to which this article is referring. It is describing the phenomenon of a moon, full or otherwise, physically appearing blue in color.
On the 28th of August, 1883, the volcano of Krakatoa, of the Straits of Sunda, had blown up. It is said that the sound was heard 2,000 miles, and that 36,380 persons were killed in the aftermath, and that the extraordinary atmospheric effects of 1883 were first noticed in the last of August or the first of September. However, for seven years the atmospheric phenomena continued, so how would “volcanic dust” explain the phenomenon occurring in all that time? Or the fact that this phenomenon occurred in Trinidad before the eruption occurred and was also seen in Natal, South Africa as little as six months before.
But Krakatoa: that’s the explanation that the scientists gave. I don’t know what whopper the medicine men told.
Nordenskiold, before 1883, wrote a great deal upon his theory of cosmic dust, and Prof. Cleveland Abbe contended against the Krakatoan explanation — but that this is the orthodoxy of the main body of scientists. Nordenskiold states: “It is now, as it was in 1888, considered that the atmospheric effects produced by Krakatau’s eruptions persisted until 1886, when “things had returned to their normal condition.” Ibid, 397-418. Although Krakatau may have been responsible for some of the most spectacular of the atmospheric effects, its predominant contribution may not have been exclusive, before its May and August eruptions in 1883 and after 1886. The eruption of Etna in May of 1886 produced afterglows through that summer. And, the eruptions of Bandaisan in Japan, and of Ritter Island in the Bismarck Archipelago, in 1888, and the eruption of Bogoslov in the Aleutians, in 1890, may have been responsible for atmospheric effects following the lapse identified by Fort. H.H. Lamb. “Volcanic dust in the atmosphere; with a chronology and assessment of its meteorological significance.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, s.A, 266 (1970): 425-533, at 475, 520.
The orthodox explanation:
See the Report of the Krakatoa Committee of the Royal Society. It comes out absolutely for the orthodox explanation, absolutely and beautifully, also expensively. There are 492 pages in the “Report,” and 40 plates, some of them marvellously colored. It was issued after an investigation that took five years. You couldn’t think of anything done more efficiently, artistically, authoritatively. The mathematical parts are especially impressive: distribution of the dust of Krakatoa; velocity of translation and rates of subsidence; altitudes and persistences, etc.
http://www.resologist.net/damnei.htm
Charles Fort: The Book of the Damned
