November 20, 1893: The Oahu newspaper Pacific Commercial Advertiser reports that there seems to be an eruption at Kilauea on the Big Island. This may come as news to Honolulu, but not to Maui, which suffers the worst attack of VOG since Westerners arrived more than a century ago. Of course, no one calls it VOG, as the word had not been invented yet.VOG is an amalgam of Smoke and Fog, as it references volcanoes. Its first use was as SMOG, of course, which appeared in English for the first time in 1905, to describe the haze which hung over London.In the past several years, several meteorologists have claimed that there is no such thing as VOG, that in fact what Maui experiences is car pollution, and they say they have the air chemical analysis to prove it. We can only say that indeed that might be true, but then, what were people complaining about back in 1893: horse exhaust?

The painting above  depicts the Kilauea Volcano eruption of 1893. It hangs in the Volcano Museum at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Big Island of Hawaii.