Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD | History Continued | World History Today | Today in History
Channel: History Continued
Date: 2021-08-24

In the late summer or autumn of 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius violently spewed forth a deadly cloud of super-heated tephra and gases to a height of 33 kilometres or 21 miles, ejecting molten rock, pulverized pumice and hot ash at 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing 100,000 times the thermal energy of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The event gives its name to the Vesuvian type of volcanic eruption, characterised by eruption columns of hot gases and ash exploding into the stratosphere, although the event also included pyroclastic flows associated with Pelean eruptions. Small earthquakes were felt for four days before the 79 AD eruption, but the warnings were not recognised. The inhabitants of the area surrounding Mount Vesuvius had been accustomed to minor earth tremors in the region; the writer Pliny the Younger wrote that they "were not particularly alarming because they are frequent in Campania".

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