We hear about the big ones like Etna in Sicily that has been erupting for centuries. However, every once in awhile one like Mount St Helens or Vesuvius or Krakatoa really blows a billion tons of material into the sky and reminds us we are very insignificant.
Yes, indeed. The explosion of Krakatoa was the loudest sound ever heard by mankind, ten miles around everybody would have been deafened, had the volcano not been at sea. Still, the boom was audible as far away as Perth, on the west coast of Australia.
And the Tambora explosion emitted about ten cubic miles of matter into the athmosphere, which caused the weather anomaly which is known as the „year without summer“. Crops failed all over the world, and a staggering number of human beings starved to death.