Step Done 2026-10-24

Read the Lima newspaper that survives in Madrid: no eruption news, but big gaps

Ken read the Minerva Peruana through Memoria de Madrid and sent screenshots; Claude read them. Checked: issue 71 (17 December 1808) in full, and the front-page contents of 28 January 1809 and 1 March 1809. No report of an eruption, ash, darkness, booming or anything from the southern provinces. But the paper is almost all war news from Spain, and Madrid's copy is missing most of January and February 1809, the weeks when news from the Bolivian border would have arrived. Peru's national library, which may hold them, would not load for either of us.

Verdict: mild evidence against an Andean volcano, not decisive. Worth retrying Peru's library another day.

How it connects

This step is about Hobbyist idea: Tambo Quemado in the Bolivian Andes was the 1808 volcano

This step is about Look west of the Americas for December 1808

This step is about Hobbyist idea: Putana in Chile was one of several eruptions behind the 1809 signal

This step we read it in Minerva Peruana, Lima 1805 to 1810, the only newspaper in the Viceroyalty of Peru. Issues of 1808 at the Biblioteca Nacional del Peru digital library; issues from 24 November 1808 to July 1810 at Memoria de Madrid (record 9569). Both block automated access.

This step and then Narrowed the 1458 mystery volcano with glass chemistry

This step came after Tested the 1286 puzzle with the monthly ice-core data