AIA Lecture Series: What Horrible Thing Happened Around the World in AD 536?

The few literate cultures in AD 536 recorded intense cold, crop failures, starvation, and deaths in the northern hemisphere. Tree rings in North America, Europe, and Asia record 15 years of cold beginning in AD 536. Ice cores in Greenland and Antarctica record a dramatic increase in sulfur in the same year, indicating an eruption occurred in a tropical latitude north of the equator. This lecture will discuss the worst worldwide disaster to occur in the past few millennia, as well as its cause.