If such an event were to occur today, the infrastructure we have for electricity and electronics would experience devastating effects that could easily cause trilions of dollars in damage. Telegraph systems, even when disconnected, experienced their own induced currents, causing shocks and even starting fires. Aurorae were observed around the world: miners awoke in the Rockies newspapers could be read by the aurora's light the bright green curtain appeared in Cuba, Hawaii, Mexico and Colombia.
Some 18 hours later (about three to four times the speed of most solar flares), the largest geomagnetic storm in recorded history occurred on Earth. This turned out to be the first-ever observation of what we now call a solar flare.
But in 1859, solar astronomer Richard Carrington happened to be looking at the Sun, tracking a large, irregular sunspot, when something unprecedented occurred: a "white light flare" was observed, intensely bright and moving across the spot itself for around 5 minutes before disappearing entirely. Until 1859, solar astronomy was extremely simple: scientists studied the light from the Sun, the sunspots that occasionally dotted the Sun's surface, and viewed the corona during solar eclipses.
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