Dusted Files

In 430 BC a disease killed one in four Athenians, including Pericles, and fundamentally altered the course of the war. A historian named Thucydides caught it, survived, and wrote the most detailed symptom description in ancient literature. 2,400 years later it still has no confirmed match.

On January 12, 1888, children left for school across the Dakota Territory in mild weather. By afternoon, the temperature had dropped 40 degrees in thirty minutes. 235 people died — many frozen within sight of shelter they never found. No warning had been issued.

In September 1859, a solar storm gave telegraph operators electric shocks from disconnected equipment. Some kept working — powered by the aurora alone. The same storm today would collapse the global power grid. In 2012, one of equal strength missed Earth by nine days.