New England's "Dark Day." May 19, 1780 

First video. Totally subscribed. Love the presentation, especially as someone from CT lol , keep up the great work =D

So you're not going to tell us what caused the phenomenon? Smh

Happened here in Pinellas Co, FL. The fires were far north of us, but the smoke moved in early in the morning and I could smell burning. I went outside and could see smoke at the street level, and the sky was dim. The fires were more than a hundred miles away, but the winds carried them to us while feeding the fire.

There have been recent wildfires to the north of us in Canada that produce smoke and haze here in Minnesota, hundred of miles away. It's been ongoing for days, depending on the wind. We've had to keep the windows closed at times, as the smell of smoke is so strong.

My mother grew up in a house on Hillcrest off Upham on the east side. It was my grandma's home for 67 years.

I'm in Rhode island. Today, May 30, 2023, smoke from the Tantallon Fire in Nova Scotia has blocked out the sun. It's way cooler than normal and the smell of smoke is thick in the air. You can SEE it moving in, like a fog bank only higher in the atmosphere. I can barely see across the Seekonk River now, which is very narrow. It started as a bright, late spring day. Now it's a mucky gray day.

@@jabbermocky4520 There are bigger fires burning near Shelbourne NS and St Andrews in NB - both closer to you. And I am sure there are fires in Maine. But yeah smoke travels far.

You're a New Yorker? My condolences.

@@deemikait depends if he’s from state or city. State can be very beautiful. City? Meh..not so much. I’ll never understand how people can choose concrete over nature. Something must be fundamentally wrong with them..

​@@rolux4853 it's not just the city that suffers.... Even western NY, for all it's beauty, suffers from the tyranny of Albany.

@@rolux4853 Agreed!

@@deemikanew york’s great. there’s something to do at almost any hour… you can’t get bored enough in new york to post stupid bullsh*t like sending someone condolences for wherever they live.

You should publish them, sir! Have them added to a historic registry maybe, New England's history is fascinating.

New Hampshire is still a place of dark forests and among the ancient twisted trees roam monsters, serpents and the spirits of the dead.

My great great grandfather who emigrated in 1870 from County Mayo was named John Patrick Moran! 😊

@@johncasey1020 you think that’s bad I’m from Cleveland 😂

Thank you for your contribution to this vid

Central Minnesota, here. We've had just the tiniest bit of haze, just enough to notice during the day, and reddish sunrises/sunsets.

Yes we've experienced a strange haze on a couple of cloudless days here in lower Michigan too. It has cleared up now. My sympathies to the folks up north.

@@faithyourfear6401 Lower Michigan? Oof. That's where my ex is from. (and has since moved back to. good riddance, ya C U Next Tuesday!)

We had a bit of haze in northwestern Ontario from the Alberta fires, but not very much

Now in NY and the Northeast US

Sorry about that but we're doing the best we can to get it under control, It's been a rough summer.

That’s very cool.

a few of my relatives were in North America thousands of years before the Europeans came and destroyed it and murdered most of the native inhabitants

A few weeks of celibacy would make anyone shake!

Shadowace . What was their origin as I am curious of settlers before the pilgrims. I grew up not far away from Plymouth rock and thinks that it is history that deserves to be remembered. Thanks

@@327JohnnySS Part of the family were fishermen that came from Scotland, I have less info on the English side, though I would imagine they immigrated for the same reason.

That was the Harbison Canyon fire. I was seven, and remember it well. Ash fell all over Pacific Beach, and we rode our bikes through it like snow!

@@johnpolhamus9041 I forgot about the ashes. When it was over we had to do a lot of sweeping.

Great memories - crazy I was a 6 year old in 1970 in San Diego & remember it also, it was kinda scary & dominated the headlines. Plus we were in La Mesa / El Cajon / Fletcher Hills area so quite close to this massive fire. Brush fires are all a part of So Cal life, right ? For San Diegans stuff like this, the Crest Fire & PSA 182 Crash were "watershed" events you always remember.

The same happened when I was at NAS North Island in 2003. There were huge wildfires in north San Diego County and one afternoon the smoke was so thick it almost looked like the sun had gone down. A Navy PH took a great series of pictures of the USS Stennis pulling out of NASNI in the gloom. Even though you can tell the sun is well above the Point Loma hills, it is so dark that Stennis and her helos had their navigation lights on. Stennis even had the numbers on her island lit. This is a link to the image on Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/134160831@N07/23576197753/

⁠@@dgax65 I was there in 2003, and it freaked me out! I had gone out the night before and was sleeping in. I kept waking up and thinking, “It’s still dark out there, so it must still be early.” I finally sat up and looked at my clock. It was 11:30 and still dark. I looked out the window and saw no sign of life, no birds, no people, no cars, and for a split second, I thought something very bad might have happened. That was so awful. I worked at a Red Cross station, and saw too many people in shock who had lost their homes.

If I could give you TWO thumbs up I would simply for the Warren Zevon reference. kudos good sir, KUDOS!

I think you are right, the description is precisely the same, what people are experiencing in such a conditions, or similar conditions are when volcano became active.

I've witnessed this in Australia a couple of times during intense bushfires. Truly frightening given what followed.

Also people probably used wood to heat and cook their homes, so smoke was probably a common smell.

@@DigitalDiabloUK Good point.

​@@DigitalDiabloUK why would you cook your home?

@@Marin3r101 the why doesn't matter - the simple fact is that in that time and place, if you wanted to cook your home (or even your neighbor's home), your only option would be to use a wood fire.

Dead ????

@@rhuephus Not sure that stops them. Pretty sure Feinstein's a zombie.

He sure was no golfer!

@@RevQuads who cares if they golf as long as they lead and not mumble and stay in a basement.

They dont make them like that anymore. Politicians with honor, I mean.

It's Red Sky at night. It's about the clouds.👍

@@walterdebnam8021 , that's what happens when insomnia strikes. I'll fix it. It was a rough night.....

@Aqua Fyre, geologist Simon Winchesters' book about Krakatoa was an excellent read.

So this is a coastal New England saying? This explains much. The saying never made sense to me, but I was raised nearer the Pacific coast.

We say shepherds delight … shepherds warning. Brought up far from the coast 😀

that was a crazy day

The issues is that forest fires are extremely rare here in the east, and forest fires large enough to inject enough smoke into the atmosphere to be visible at distances of more than a couple dozen miles basically don’t exist. They wouldn’t really have anything to compare it to.

I'm in London, in south western Ontario, about half way between Toronto and Detroit. We had haze and a red moon and sun last week from the Alberta fires. Where I live what's left of the forests are dominated by hardwoods, but the further north one goes, it gradually shifts to a coniferous dominated forest. If the "Algonquin" referred to in the video is the area now called "Algonquin Park", a huge forest fire would not be only possible, but periodically expected. Given that the water ways in that area were not only important to the fur trade, but the rivers being the "highways" from Montreal to the Great Lakes and beyond, I would think there would be written record of a forest fire of that size in the 1780's.

Forest fires are extremely rare in New England so they would have no knowledge of any fires or smoke that would be causing it

@@SapphireX413 True. And even if the fires were noted at the time in Canada, it's likely that this news would never become associated with the May 19th event-- even if it eventually made it to New England.

Same here in Montana...maybe dimmer.

Back then, it was the Day of Judgement, and today it is Climate Change. Neither narrative likes perspective very much.

I am trying for a cabinet of curiosities.

1 mile is plenty, don't be greedy 😜

@@edwardfletcher7790 It looked like LA 1970.

@@mikemaricle9941 I'm in Australia, if you want to see some crazy 💩, search for our "driving in a bushfire" videos 😕

I wager Joseph Turner is not too happy about being dead now.

It was like that in Humboldt, too. Ash on cars and plants, air unsafe to breathe and way too close for comfort...

The panic in the 18th century? Do you watch the news?!😂

I was gonna say, sounds like 9/9/2020, the height of the fires in Nor Cal, when everything was dark and “apocalyptic orange.” I’ve seen red moons during fire season several times. Lots of smoke and ash in the air would cause this … especially if there was also an eclipse at the same time, but that’s just me speculating. :)

@BSCHULER What is the Walking Purpose?

@@throne1797 The Walking Purchase, not Walking Purpose. I hesitate to even begin to explain it here as it is very complicated and remains even somewhat controversial today. But it was a scam deal devised and used to steal land from the Indians living in the eastern part of what is now Pennsylvania.The children of late colonist William Penn claimed their father had signed a deal with the local indian tribe before his death that they now wanted to carry out. It was called The Walking Purchase, because the fake forged deal, was a land purchase that would be based on how far a man can walk in 3 days. After the walk was done, the scammed Indians realized it was a scam right away, but our judicial system wasn't at all fair at the time, and thus did nothing to help the Indians. Since then, using modern technological advances, the evidence has been conclusive that the scam was a total scam. Even the supposed deal was a fake forgery. But before modern science, people back then knew it was a scam as one just needs to look at the original Walking Purchase map to see the first scam. They were to draw a straight line to the Delaware River as their northern border.. but instead of going the shortest straight line route to the river as they were supposed to, they drew a line along the longest path they could to the river to make the purchased land larger. Anyway, I just find it amazing as I live along the walking path itself and I think it is also an amazing story and example of one way arriving colonists stole the Indians land. I find the way the Indians were treated by the court system the most interesting these days. But overall, I just find every part of this historic Walking Purchase story very interesting and compelling.

The Walking Purchase exemplifies how all subsequent deeds are "fatality flawed" & mute🔕

@@bschuler didn’t they also find one of the best colonial runners to grab as much land as possible?

@@ElleCee62978 Yes they did. I omitted it as I was just trying to be concise. But growing up along it's path, that is what used to fascinate me when I was a child. I was amazed at the distance he was able to travel over rivers, creeks, hills, valleys, etc. in the time allowed. Nowadays, the legal process afterwards is what fascinates me. I am sort of amazed nobody ever made a Hollywood movie out of the Walking Purchase, as it is a fascinating tale and many people don't know about it. But I guess the movie target audience would be very limited and it is a somewhat controversial subject.

yesterdays sunrise was wild.

And then there is the possibility that same Krakatoa made 536 c.e. the "worst year in history."

"fires grow as large as the lower 48 states" ?? That would an area greater than the state of Alaska

@@rhuephus He said “as large as *small* lower 48 states” as in a fire the size of RI, for example.

@@rhuephus You might want to read my post again. You have misread my post.

@@GoBlueGirl78 Thank you Amanda. Lovely name.

^_^

I was too back in the 1970s for a summer fighting a fire that wouldn't go out near Big Sur, CA. Pay was $2.35 for state land and $7 something for federal land. Big suspicion fell on some out of state/in-state firefighters re-starting the fires for very good pay.

Happy Birthday!

Stop the video at an image you like, use Print Screen, then paste the image into a Microsoft Word (or similar) program. Crop off the irrelevant bits, and increase or decrease the size of the image at your pleasure.

@@lizj5740 Thanks! Very thoughtful of you. :)

@@rickkearn7100 You're welcome.

LOL- I'll see if I can set that up.

The Year Without a Summer represents the first anthropogenic climate change scare in history. Prior to 1816, unusual weather phenomena like the Dark Day of New England were attributed to God's wrath, but in the summer of 1816, claims abounded that Ben Franklin had messed up the world's climate by inventing and marketing the lightning rod. Since then Climate Change and Luddites have been closely intertwined.

If you travel to Connecticut let me know! State Library has a Hiking Through History program