History - Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius

 

The destruction and extinguishing of Pompeii was 1,924 Years Ago ( 79 AD ) took 25 hours; no one was aware that Mount Vesuvius was an active volcano at the time, even despite a warning earthquake before the eruption, being the only estimating one in the entirety of Europe.

    There have been approximately 30 eruptions since the destruction of Pompeii; the most recent eruption of Mount Vesuvius was in 1944 during World War II.

    The Pompeii eruption obliterated and buried the nearby cities and towns in the thick ash. The wall of smoke was estimated to be over 32 km tall and reached speeds of 700km per hour.It is believed that the ash had entirely blocked out the sun over the City of Pompeii in less than an hour after the initial eruption. The gas rained down on the people of Pompeii grievously burning them alive, The bodies of the dead are now preserved in plaster:

During the excavations in Pompeii, the remains of over one thousand victims of the 79 AD eruption have been found. During the first phase of the eruption, those who hadn’t left the city in time were trapped in their homes or shelters, buried by a shower of pumice stones and lapilli or killed by the roofs and walls collapsing under the weight of falling volcanic debris, reaching about three metres in height. Of these victims, only the bones have been found. Afterwards, a high-temperature pyroclastic flow hit the city at high speed and filled all the spots not yet engulfed by other volcanic materials, so that anybody still in the city died at once of thermal shock. The bodies of these victims remained in the same position as when the pyroclastic flow hit them and, being covered by calcified layers of ash, the form of their bodies was preserved even after the biological material decomposed. Thanks to the method perfected by Giuseppe Fiorelli, since 1863 a little over a hundred casts have been made.