The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD put the volcano into the history books. The eruption was one of the biggest the volcano has ever seen and was caused due to the clogging of the vent in the volcano for a number of years. The volcano attempted to unclog the vent many times and caused great tremors in the earth resulting in earthquakes the greatest of which was in 62 AD and resulted in much destruction of the nearby towns such as Pompeii and Herculaneum. Then, in 79 AD the volcano succeeded in unclogging itself and erupted. The eruption was so great, that it blew the whole top of the volcano, creating a crater over 14km wide. A huge cloud of ash, gathered in a mushroom shape formed and the wind blew it towards Pompeii where it deposited several metres of ash over the town burying alive the people inside. I got these pictures from http://www.answers.com/ and http://www.dailygalaxy.com/.
Pompeii was the only town to be struck by ash however. On the opposite sideof the volcano, a boiling mudflow struck the towns of Herculaneum,Oplontis and Stabiae. Not all the victims were in the towns though. Many people escaped but were intoxicated by the poisonous gases from the eruption or were hit by the pumice falling from the sky. One man who was watching on while all this was happening was Pliny the Elder. He was fascinated by the mushroom cloud of ash that formed from the eruption and decided to get a closer look. He went across the Aegean Sea to the volcano but the cloud of ash covering the sun made everthing dark and it was impossible to see. Shortly after this, he was killed by falling pumice.
Pliny's nephew Pliny the Younger wrote to a man in Rome called Tacitus to inform him and describe to him the eruption of Vesuvius. Over a thousand years later, excavating on Pompeii began after they accidentally discovered artefacts while digging a well. A man called Giuseppe Fiorelli decide to pump plaster into the cavities of the bodies they found. This preserved them and revealed some of their features such as the shoes they were wearing. People can now visit the long lost city of Pompeii and see many of the well-preserved buildings and bodies from 79ad when the eruption occurred.
Thousands of Pompeiians died as they didn"t take warning to the earthquake that happened over 15 years earlier and therefore, they perished. Today Pompeii is a major tourist attraction due to its well preserved acient buildings and bodies thanks to the ash that covered the town.
I got this picture from facts-about-Italy.blogspot.com.
No comments:
Post a Comment