PAGE TWO ICELANDIC INVASION England Suffers from Icelandic Eruption The summer of 1783 brought an "unusual rise in deaths" in England. But it was not an epidemic, or a battle, that brought about the estimated 11,500 "extra deaths". Nor was it a famine; no, it was the homeland of the invader that suffered the famine. Eighteenth century terrorism? No, say a team of Cambridge university researchers. It was the sulphuric gases and fine particles (aerosols) invading the air that Englishmen and women were breathing that summer; the summer of the infamous eruptions of the Laki Craters in Iceland. (Where, incidentally, a quarter of the population was gassed, smothered or starved.) A potpourri of volcanic gases, including an estimated 122 megatons of sulphur dioxide, was carried by the prevailing winds over parts of Europe, especially England. Historical records speak of a "haze" or a "thick, hot vapour" filling the air. There were widespread reports of headaches, coughs, and other respiratory illnesses. A temperature inversion "could have brougt the toxic emissions" of gas and fine particles of ash down into the human environment and kept them there, say the researchers, Claire Witham and Clive Oppenheimer. The timing of the deaths was found by correlating the death dates on tombstones with the peak periods of the Laki eruptions. For more details on this story, see the Bulletin of Volcanology (online) May, 2004. Some information in this article from BBC News