Indonesia
A massive supervolcano erupted at present-day Lake Toba around 70,000 BCE. It is believed to have caused a global volcanic winter and cooling of the climate, and subsequently led to a genetic bottleneck in human evolution, though this is still debated. The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora and the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa were among the largest in recorded history. The former resulted in 92,000 deaths and created an umbrella of volcanic ash which spread and blanketed parts of the archipelago, and made much of Northern Hemisphere without summer in 1816. The latter produced the loudest sound in recorded history, and resulted in 36,000 deaths that are attributed to the eruption itself and the tsunamis it created. Significant additional effects were also felt around the world years after the eruption. Recent major disasters due to seismic activity include the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake.
New Madrid Seismic Zone
The first known written record of an earthquake felt in the NMSZ was from a French missionary traveling up the Mississippi with a party of explorers. At 1 pm on Christmas Day 1699, at a site near the present-day location of Memphis, the party was startled by a short period of ground shaking.Hundreds of aftershocks of the 1811–1812 series followed over a period of several years. Aftershocks strong enough to be felt occurred until 1817. The largest earthquakes to have occurred since then were on January 4, 1843, and October 31, 1895, with magnitude estimates of 6.0 and 6.6, respectively. The 1895 had its epicenter near Charleston, Missouri. The quake damaged virtually all the buildings in Charleston, created sand volcanoes by the city, cracked a pier on the Cairo Rail Bridge and toppled chimneys in St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; Gadsden, Alabama; and Evansville, Indiana.