In this modern day, two million people live in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, one of the most sinister of famous volcanoes. This active mountain has exploded more than fifty times since its momentous eruption in 79 A.D. That eruption buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Since those cities were buried and lost, this volcano continued to erupt about every hundred years until roughly 1037 A.D., when it fell quiet for almost six hundred years.
In 1631, Mount Vesuvius killed four thousand more people. During the recovery work after this eruption, workers discovered the original ruins of Pompeii, that had been buried for almost 1600 years. Three hundred years later, the excavations finally revealed the full story of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
If you stand in the excavated ruins of Pompeii, you can see Vesuvius behind you. It's about five miles away. If you could imagine billowing, huge, black-gray clouds rushing towards you at over a hundred miles an hour, that is what the Romans saw, moments before they were entombed by hot ash.
Mount Vesuvius stands in the middle of an older and large eroded cone named Mount Somma. Half of this is still visible on the east side of Vesuvius.
In 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius trembled under a huge earthquake. The top of the mountain split open and the inhabitants of Pompeii were covered with pumice, stones and ash. A river of mud flowed over the city of Herculaneum.
No doubt the people in the cities debated whether it would be safer for them to stay inside or try to outrun the lava and pumice. The buildings themselves now shook violently, and they seemed to be swaying. Many put pillows on their heads as they ran from their homes, dodging the stone and pumice and ash.
The smell of sulfur and the flames of burning lava roared down the mountain, and the dense fumes choked the life from anyone foolish enough not to flee the city. They also saw the sea sucked away and then forced back with a vengeance. It must have looked similar to the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004. They could hear the wailing of children, women and infants and the shouting of men, praying for help or even for a quick and merciful death. It was this devastation of human life that made Vesuvius one of the famous volcanoes, as far as destructive force is concerned.
The people who excavated Pompeii discovered what it might have looked like in 79 A.D. It was preserved in the ash. An oven in a bakery still contained loaves of bread almost two thousand years old! Some of Vesuvius' victims left cavities in the hard ash, when their bodies decomposed.
Mount Vesuvius is the only volcano on the mainland of Europe that has erupted within the last hundred years. It creates a beautiful landscape, but the danger is always there, under the earth. Vesuvius is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, because three million people live in its shadow. Vesuvius was revered by the Romans and Greeks as being sacred to the god Hercules. The town of Herculaneum, once a city at its base, was named after this god.
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