The worst year to be alive
A volcanic dust veil dims the sun for eighteen months and crops fail across the hemisphere.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 14 years
- Known to
- ± 2 years
- Era
- Post-Classical, Holocene
In 536 CE a mysterious fog dims the sun across Europe, the Middle East and Asia; Procopius writes that the sun gave light without brightness all year. Ice cores identify massive volcanic eruptions in 536, 540 and 547, and tree rings record the coldest decade in 2,000 years. Famine follows across the northern hemisphere, and the historian Michael McCormick has called 536 the beginning of the worst period to be alive.