The Docket | Climate Past

The Ghost Story

The Monster and the Famine

By Seth D. Carrington— March 24, 2026

Feature image for article: The Monster and the Famine

In June of 1816, five young English tourists sat by a fire above Lake Geneva and invented monsters. The rain that trapped them indoors has become the most celebrated bad weather in literary history. We teach it in universities. We make films about it. We know every detail of what happened inside that villa.

A hundred and fifty miles away, four thousand refugees were picking at animal carcasses in muddy fields. When they reached the nearest city, police beat them with swords and drove them into the forests. The same weather made both stories. Only one gets told at house parties. The other shows what governments still do when climate wrecks the food supply and panic sets in.

The Ghost Story

The Monster and the Famine

In June of 1816, five young English tourists sat by a fire above Lake Geneva and invented monsters. The rain that trapped them indoors has become the most celebrated bad weather in literary history. We teach it in universities. We make films about it. We know every detail of what happened inside that villa.

A hundred and fifty miles away, four thousand refugees were picking at animal carcasses in muddy fields. When they reached the nearest city, police beat them with swords and drove them into the forests. The same weather made both stories. Only one gets told at house parties. The other shows what governments still do when climate wrecks the food supply and panic sets in.

Seth D. Carrington

Former merchant seaman and labor journalist who spent decades watching working communities navigate crises while elites offered empty promises. Writes with dark humor about the gap between climate rhetoric and lived reality.

The Horseless Summer

A Volcano Killed the Horses. A Baron in Mannheim Invented the Bicycle.

Mount Tambora's 1815 eruption erased summer across the Northern Hemisphere. In Baden, the oat harvest collapsed. Horses starved by the tens of thousands. Grain shipments piled up at Mannheim's Rhine harbor with nothing alive to pull them inland.

On June 12, 1817, Baron Karl von Drais straddled a 48-pound wooden frame with two in-line wheels and a steerable front end, then covered 14 kilometers in under an hour. Twice walking speed, no oats required. The famine that killed the horse produced the operating principle behind every bicycle ever built.

The Horseless Summer

A Volcano Killed the Horses. A Baron in Mannheim Invented the Bicycle.

Mount Tambora's 1815 eruption erased summer across the Northern Hemisphere. In Baden, the oat harvest collapsed. Horses starved by the tens of thousands. Grain shipments piled up at Mannheim's Rhine harbor with nothing alive to pull them inland.

On June 12, 1817, Baron Karl von Drais straddled a 48-pound wooden frame with two in-line wheels and a steerable front end, then covered 14 kilometers in under an hour. Twice walking speed, no oats required. The famine that killed the horse produced the operating principle behind every bicycle ever built.

IN SUMMARY

Brief craze:

Several thousand Laufmaschinen were built across Europe and North America by 1818, spawning rental businesses and riding rinks as far as Vienna.

Quick death:

The 1817 harvest recovered, horses returned, and cities banned the machines from sidewalks. The fad collapsed within months.

Delayed bridge:

A Bavarian boy who rode a draisine to school grew up to attach pedal cranks in 1853, connecting Drais's invention to the modern bicycle.

Scholarly link:

Biographer Hans-Erhard Lessing showed that both of Drais's vehicle attempts coincided precisely with Baden's worst crop failures.

Bitter end:

Drais renounced his baronial title during the 1848 revolutions, had his pension and assets seized, and died penniless at sixty-six.

Frozen Ground

Ask Me in April

Frozen Ground

Ask Me in April

The Exodus and the Gap

The Gravestone and the Wagons

In June 1816, snow fell across Vermont and New Hampshire. By August, frost had killed the corn. What followed reshaped American settlement geography: thousands of families loaded wagons for the Ohio Valley. The migration story follows the people who left. In Ashland, New Hampshire, a gravestone carved thirty-one years later remembers the man who stayed and grew forty bushels of wheat.

The Exodus and the Gap

The Answer in the Newspaper

In February 1816, a New York newspaper printed an account of a massive volcanic eruption in the Dutch East Indies. Months later, when June snow and August frost destroyed crops across New England, nobody connected the two events. A Maine minister aimed smoked glass at the sun and carefully drew the wrong answer. The right one already existed, published thirty-two years earlier in a pamphlet nobody remembered.

The Exodus and the Gap

The Gravestone and the Wagons

In June 1816, snow fell across Vermont and New Hampshire. By August, frost had killed the corn. What followed reshaped American settlement geography: thousands of families loaded wagons for the Ohio Valley. The migration story follows the people who left. In Ashland, New Hampshire, a gravestone carved thirty-one years later remembers the man who stayed and grew forty bushels of wheat.

The Exodus and the Gap

The Answer in the Newspaper

In February 1816, a New York newspaper printed an account of a massive volcanic eruption in the Dutch East Indies. Months later, when June snow and August frost destroyed crops across New England, nobody connected the two events. A Maine minister aimed smoked glass at the sun and carefully drew the wrong answer. The right one already existed, published thirty-two years earlier in a pamphlet nobody remembered.

The Exodus and the Gap

The Gravestone and the Wagons

In June 1816, snow fell across Vermont and New Hampshire. By August, frost had killed the corn. What followed reshaped American settlement geography: thousands of families loaded wagons for the Ohio Valley. The migration story follows the people who left. In Ashland, New Hampshire, a gravestone carved thirty-one years later remembers the man who stayed and grew forty bushels of wheat.

The Exodus and the Gap

The Answer in the Newspaper

In February 1816, a New York newspaper printed an account of a massive volcanic eruption in the Dutch East Indies. Months later, when June snow and August frost destroyed crops across New England, nobody connected the two events. A Maine minister aimed smoked glass at the sun and carefully drew the wrong answer. The right one already existed, published thirty-two years earlier in a pamphlet nobody remembered.