Mount Vesuvius


In 79 A.D., Mount Vesuvius exploded with the energy of a thousand nuclear bombs. It killed something like 16,000 people as rock and ash poured out of it at a rate of more than a million tons per second. It was so devastating that it has become an icon of the terror of an active volcano.

1934 years later, astronaut Chris Hadfield took this photo of the sleeping monster from over 300 kilometers above it. As you can see, the volcano is located just 9 kilometers (5.5 miles) east of Naples, Italy, with a population of more than 3 million people, making Vesuvius one of the most dangerous volcanoes on the planet. 
Photo by NASA

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