Page 6 - The Local Eye - Issue 130 August 2016

6
August 2016 History Spotlights...

August 24, 79 A.D. - Mount Vesuvius
erupted and destroyed the cities of
Pompeii, Stabiae and Herculaneum.
Mount Vesuvius is an active volcano east of Naples, Italy. It is
the only volcano on the European mainland to have erupted
within the last hundred years, although it is not currently
erupting.
Mount Vesuvius is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that
led to the destruction of the Roman cities of Pompeii and
Herculaneum. It has however erupted many times before and since that date including three eruptions
during the 1900s the last being in 1944 although few times since then landslides in the crater have raised
clouds of ash dust, which caused false alarms of an eruption. Despite the high number of eruptions since
AD79 none have been on the scale of the explosive occurrence in 79. The eruptions vary greatly in but are
characterized by explosive outbursts of the kind dubbed Plinian after Pliny the Younger, the Roman writer
who observed the 79 eruption.
The main eruption is thought to have lasted about 19 hours, during which time the volcano released about
1 cubic mile (4 cubic kilometres) of ash and rock over a wide area to the south and south-east of the crater,
with about 3 m (10 ft) falling on Pompeii.
Estimates of the population of Pompeii range from 10,000 to 25,000 whilst Herculaneum is believed to have
had a population of about 5,000. It is not known how many people the eruption killed, although around
1,150 remains of bodies or casts made of their impressions in the ash deposits have been recovered in and
around Pompeii. The remains of about 350 bodies have been found at Herculaneum, some just as recently
as 1980 when most of that number were discovered in a vault. It is realised though these figures greatly
underestimate the total number of deaths over the region affected by the eruption..
Over a third of the victims at Pompeii were found in the ash fall deposits, most of these inside buildings.
These are thought to have been killed mainly by roof collapses, with the smaller number of victims found
outside of buildings probably being killed by
falling roof slates or by larger rocks thrown
out by the volcano. The remaining bodies
found at Pompeii were in the pyroclastic surge
deposits, and so were probably killed by them,
most likely from a combination of suffocation
through ash inhalation and blast and debris
thrown around.
Mount Vesuvius is regarded as one of the most
dangerous volcanoes in the world because of
the population of over 3 million people now
living close to it and that the volcanco has such
a history of explosive eruptions. It is the most
densely populated volcanic region in the world.

Birthdays This Month Include...
Jack Black
Halle Berry 28th August 1969
Charlize Theron
14th August 1966
7th August 1975

Dustin Hoffman Robert De Niro Cameron Diaz
8th August 1937 17th August 1943 30th August 1972
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