Man tends to term any change in his environment that affects his works or his life in an unwanted fashion as a "catastrophe". Therefore, catastrophes may not only be represented by sudden violent events, such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions, but also by the gradual slow drowning of a city like Venice a process that may take centuries to run its course. In this book we shall deal only with …
Nature gave one of its warnings in late May 1883. The uninhabited, largely ignored island of Krakatau, in the middle of the Sunda Straits between the Indonesian islands of Sumatra and Java, suddenly stirred. Billowing clouds of smoke and booming thunder caused a small shiver of terror among the inhabitants of the nearby islands.