World roundup: August 27 2025

Stories from Iran, India, Ukraine, and elsewhere

TODAY IN HISTORY

August 27, 1883: The Krakatoa volcano erupts violently, virtually destroying the island (located in what is now Indonesia) and causing substantial loss of life. Days of volcanic activity culminated on August 27 with four explosions, each of which generated massive tsunamis and the third of which is regarded as perhaps the loudest sound in recorded history. The immediate effects of the eruption killed 36,417 people according to Dutch records. The eruption caused a volcanic winter and ejected so much sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere that it cooled (and darkened) the planet for the next five years.

A photograph of one of the eruptions (Leiden University via Wikimedia Commons)

August 27, 1896: Shortly after 9 AM local time, British forces invade the Zanzibar Sultanate over a succession dispute. Around 40 minutes later the Anglo-Zanzibar War was over and Britain’s man was on the throne. This conflict, the shortest war in recorded history, marks the point at which Britain’s protectorate over Zanzibar really took hold and the sultanate—founded when Zanzibar and Oman split into separate kingdoms in 1856—ceased to be an independent political entity in any meaningful sense.

MIDDLE EAST

SYRIA

As I noted last night, the Israeli military (IDF) killed at least six Syrian soldiers on Wednesday morning in multiple airstrikes that apparently targeted an army barracks in the town of Kiswah, just south of Damascus. At some point following the strikes, the Syrian military is claiming that Israeli soldiers conducted a raid on that facility by helicopter, then spent some two hours searching it. It’s unclear what they were hunting, nor is there any indication as to whether or not they found it. There were no clashes between Israeli and Syrian forces during the raid.