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EPISODE · May 13, 2026 · 43 MIN

Carrington Event

from Stuff You Missed in History Class · host iHeartPodcasts

The Carrington Event was a massive geomagnetic storm that happened in 1859. It led to expanded understanding of solar phenomena. Research: “Great Aurora of 1859. Art. XLII – The Great Auroral Exhibition of August 28th to September 4th, 1859.” American Journal of Science. Ser. 2. Vol. 28. July-November 1859. Cardenas, Freddy Moreno et al. “The Grand Aurorae Borealis Seen in Colombia in 1859.” Preprint submitted to Advances in Space Research. August 21, 2015. Cliver, E.W. “The 1859 space weather event: Then and now.” Advances in Space Research. 38 (2006) 119-129. Cliver, E.W. and L. Svalgaard. “The 1859 Solar-Terrestrial Disturbance and the Current Limits of Extreme Space Weather Activity.” Solar Physics. (2004) 224: 407–422. Cliver, Edward W. and William F. Dietrich. “The 1859 space weather event revisited: limits of extreme activity.” J. Space Weather Space Clim. 3 (2013) A31 DOI:10.1051/swsc/2013053 Dobrijevic, Daisy and Andrew May. “The Carrington Event: History's greatest solar storm.” Space.com. 5/20/2022. https://www.space.com/the-carrington-event Giegengack, Robert. “The Carrington Coronal Mass Ejection of 1859.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society , DECEMBER 2015, Vol. 159, No. 4. Via JSTOR.https://www.jstor.org/stable/26159195 Green, James L, and Scott Boardsen. “Duration and extent of the great auroral storm of 1859.” Advances in space research : the official journal of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) vol. 38,2 (2006): 130-135. doi:10.1016/j.asr.2005.08.054 Green, James L. et al. “Eyewitness Reports of the Great Auroral Storm of 1859.” Submitted to Advances in Space Research. NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS) 20050210157. 8/5/2005. Haeberle, Tom. “The Carrington Affair!” Amateur Astronomers Association Eyepiece. 9/1/2018. https://aaa.org/2018/09/01/the-carrington-affair/ Hayakawa, Hisashi et al. “Temporal and Spatial Evolutions of a Large Sunspot Group and Great Auroral Storms Around the Carrington Event in 1859.” Space Weather. 8/29/2019. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019SW002269 Hodgson, R. “On a Curious Appearance Seen in the Sun.” Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society vol. 19-20 (1858-1860). https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/20/1/15/983497 Hodžić, Jasna. “The Carrington Event of 1859 Disrupted Telegraph Lines. A ‘Miyake Event’ Would Be Far Worse.” JSTOR Daily. 9/7/2023. https://daily.jstor.org/the-carrington-event-of-1859-disrupted-telegraph-lines/ Howard, R.A. (2006). A Historical Perspective on Coronal Mass Ejections. In Solar Eruptions and Energetic Particles (eds N. Gopalswamy, R. Mewaldt and J. Torsti). https://doi.org/10.1029/165GM03 Josefowicz, Diane. “The British Magnetic Scheme (1839-1851): People and Institutions.” Victorian Web. https://victorianweb.org/science/geomagnetism/magneticcrusade.html Kaminski, Isabella. “'The fate of nations and the fall of kingdoms': History's epic theories of what causes aurora.” BBC. 11/16/2025. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20251114-historys-epic-theories-of-what-causes-aurora Kimball, D.S. “A Study of the Aurora of 1859.” Scientific Report No. 6. NSF Grant No. Y/22.6/327. April 1960. Klein, Christopher. “A Perfect Solar Superstorm: The 1859 Carrington Event.” History. 1/29/2025. https://www.history.com/articles/a-perfect-solar-superstorm-the-1859-carrington-event Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs, Hisashi Hayakawa. “A candidate auroral report in the Bamboo Annals, indicating a possible extreme space weather event in the early 10th century BCE.” Advances in Space Research. Volume 72, Issue 12. 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2022.01.01 Mills, Virginia. “A message from Alexander von Humboldt.” The Royal Society. 9/23/2019. https://royalsociety.org/blog/2019/09/a-message-from-alexander-von-humboldt/ Muller, C. “The Carrington solar flares of 1859: consequences on life.” Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life vol. 44,3 (2014): 185-95. doi:10.1007/s11084-014-9368-3 Phillips, Tony. “A Warning from History: The Carrington Event Was Not Unique.” Space Weather Archive. 9/1/2020. https://spaceweatherarchive.com/2020/08/30/a-warning-from-history-the-carrington-event-was-not-unique/ Phillips, Tony. “Near Miss: The Solar Superstorm of July 2012.” NASA. 12/22/2014. https://science.nasa.gov/science-research/planetary-science/23jul_superstorm/ C. Carrington, Description of a Singular Appearance seen in the Sun on September 1, 1859, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 20, Issue 1, November 1859, Pages 13–15, https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/20.1.13 Starmans, Barbara J. “Carrington Solar Flare of 1859.” The Social Historian. 11/27/2016. https://www.thesocialhistorian.com/carrington-solar-flare-of-1859/ Thompson, D. (2009) The Carrington Event and the Electric Telegraph in Victoria in Museums Victoria Collections https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/articles/2880    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Carrington Event was a massive geomagnetic storm that happened in 1859. It led to expanded understanding of solar phenomena.

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Carrington Event

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This episode was published on May 13, 2026.

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The Carrington Event was a massive geomagnetic storm that happened in 1859. It led to expanded understanding of solar phenomena. Research: “Great Aurora of 1859. Art. XLII – The Great Auroral Exhibition of August 28th to September 4th, 1859.”...

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