The Carrington Event: When the skies lit up with horror!
On September 1, 1859, the Sun spewed electrified gas and subatomic particles amounting to the energy of 10 billion atomic bombs towards the Earth, causing telegraph communications to fail, literally shocking operators, and causing systems to catch fire. Northern Lights were reported as far south as Cuba and Hawaii, allowing witnesses to read newspapers by the light of the auroras alone.
