Today marks the 125th anniversary of the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in Indonesia. About 36,000 people were killed in the vicinity and the blast was the loudest noise ever reported, with a shockwave that registered in London.

Tiny particles of ash penetrated the stratosphere to heights of 50km (30 miles) or more, turning the Sun blue or green and causing blood-red sunrises and sunsets.

The New York Times reported on November 28, 1883: “Soon after 5 o’clock the western horizon suddenly flamed into a brilliant scarlet, which crimsoned sky and clouds. People in the streets were startled at the unwonted sight and gathered in little groups on all the corners to gaze into the West. Many thought that a great fire was in progress.” Coloured stripes and bands in the sky appeared over Pennsylvania. “The sky that morning was fairly aglow with crimson and golden fires, when suddenly, to their great astonishment, an immense American flag, composed of the national colors, stood out in bold relief high in the heavens, continuing in view for a considerable length of time.”

The spectacular sights inspired Edvard Munch’s surreal sky in The Scream, as he wrote at the time in Norway: “Clouds like blood and tongues of fire hung above the blue-black fjord and the city.”

Lord Tennyson later offered a poetic scientific explanation of the spectacular skies in his St Telemachus (1892):

Had the fierce ashes of some fiery peak
Been hurl’d so high they ranged about the globe?
For day by day, thro’ many a blood-red eve, . . .
The wrathful sunset glared.