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A 1967 group of sunspots ‘nearly led to nuclear war’.
https://www.space.com/33687-solar-storm-cold-war-false-alarm.html

June 6, 2023: If you want to have a bit of fun with ChatGPT, ask it the following question: “How big was Carrington’s sunspot?”

ChatGPT’s response: “Richard Carrington’s observations of the great solar storm in 1859 did not provide a direct measurement of the size of the sunspot.”

Poor Richard Carrington must be turning in his grave. The astronomer made beautiful drawings of the sunspot, shown here in a figure from Carrington’s report in a 1859 issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society:

We definitely know how big it was.

In the mid-19th century, Carrington was known throughout England for his careful measurements of sunspots. Supported by his father’s beer-brewing business, he spent almost every cloudless day in London projecting an image of the sun through his telescope and drawing the sunspots he saw on the 11-inch solar disk. On Sept. 1st, 1859, one of them did…