I am now motivated to look it up and get some details!
For some reason I didn’t think it was that close to the Civil War.
Are solar storms dangerous to us?People talking about power failures from solar storms always point back to March 13, 1989 – 23 years ago. A CME caused a power failure in Québec, as well as across parts of the northeastern U.S. In this event, the electrical supply was cut off to over 6 million people for 9 hours.
But it’s possible for solar storms to be even more powerful than the one that caused the 1989 Québec and U.S. northeast blackout. The largest known solar flare took place on August 28, 1859. It was observed and recorded by Richard C. Carrington, and so it’s sometimes called the Carrington Event, or sometimes the 1859 Solar Superstorm. The accompanying coronal mass ejection (CME) traveled to Earth in only 17 hours, rather than the usual three or four days. The largest recorded geomagnetic storm occurred. Aurorae, or northern lights, were seen in many parts of the world. Telegraph systems throughout Europe and North America failed.
What would happen if such a powerful solar storm occurred today? And is such a powerful solar storm likely to occur again in our lifetimes? No one knows the answers to these questions with certainty. But scientists have become increasingly aware of the possibility, especially since 2008, when Sten Odenwald and James Green published an article in the magazine Scientific American about the Carrington Event and possible consequences if such a powerful storm on the sun occurred today.