Hidden History: The Tunguska Event
When talking about significant history, rarely are naturally caused phenomena put ahead of those of human origin, like great wars and crises. Some natural events are so massive that their scale is almost incomprehensible, like the catastrophic eruption of Mount Krakatoa, which boasts some historical notoriety. Few natural global events have had as much impact on modern science and popular culture as the eerie and awe-inspiring Tunguska Event—a truly massive explosion that rocked a remote part of Siberia on June 30, 1908.
It is generally believed that the blast was caused by the impact of a small celestial body. The event’s resulting impact covered about 2,150 square kilometers, but its shockwave flattened an incomprehensible expanse of over 80 million trees completely to the ground. The impact was heard as far as New York City, and shattered windows in places as far as Berlin. The event was so substantial that at the time witnesses across Eurasia reported seeing a fireball equivalent in size and brightness to the sun roar across the sky, and for many days after the impact, much of the continent found itself experiencing unusually bright nights as the wildfires in Siberia burned themselves out with ferocity. To this day, this is the largest cosmic collision with Earth in recorded human history, so it comes as a surprise it isn’t discussed more often.
The Tunguska Event immediately grabbed the attention of the world, with many parties racing to find the source of the many disturbances. The first expedition to investigate the Tunguska Event was led by Leonid Kulik in 1927, almost 20 years after the explosion occurred, due to the extremely remote nature of the estimated impact site. When his team arrived, they found that the blast had created a massive crater that was almost 200 feet deep and over half a mile wide. The crater was so large that at first, they did not realize they were standing in it and thought it was a valley.
In the years following the return of the Kulik Expedition, which had arrived at the conclusion of a possible meteoric impact, the event’s scientific implications sparked global interest in studying meteorites and the effects of extraterrestrial events on Earth. The impact of a small celestial body was a new concept at the time, and the Tunguska Event was one of the first examples to be studied in detail.
Beyond scientific interest, this event also had an impact on popular culture, especially in the first half of the century. The notorious father of cosmic horror, H.P. Lovecraft, openly admitted to drawing heavy inspiration from the mysterious alien allure of the Tunguska Event, and Orson Welles’ original War of the Worlds radio broadcast also has its origins in the public confusion surrounding the event. And who can blame them? The mystery, scale, and cosmic aspect of the Tunguska Event makes it something worth talking, writing, or even just thinking about, making it an excellent spot of hidden history.