In 1816 the Indonesian volcano Mt. Tambora erupted causing winter weather during the the summer in the northern hemisphere. From the Mistelbach pastor’s log: “The 1816th year was one of the strangest ever for humanity that you could have experienced. It was a year of wiped-out crops, caused by the rain that began in May and lasted until the end of November, which put the beautiful fruits of the fields in deep water…. This natural event led us to a great inflation in the year 1817, which was so oppressive that people had to eat grass and herbs and bran two or three times a day in order to escape starvation.”