536 sucked

in

via Science:

A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. "For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year," wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record "a failure of bread from the years 536–539." Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.

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in

Zealandia

in

via Futurism:

In a new study published in the journal Tectonics, researchers announced that they've finished mapping out most of the two million square miles of Zealandia, Earth's mostly-submerged eighth continent that mainly breaks the surface as the island of New Zealand...

The prevailing theory about how Zealandia came to be submerged, which the GNS Science team affirms, posits that as the former supercontinent of Gondwana stretched out, its tectonic plates began to crack and allow ocean water in. After Antarctica later broke off, the crust of Zealandia continued to thin out until it became submerged -- and lost to the depths.