The City That Vanished

On May 8, 1902, Mount Pelée on the Caribbean island of Martinique unleashed a searing cloud of gas and ash. Within minutes it swept through Saint-Pierre, then the island's busiest port, killing roughly 28,000 people almost instantly.

Almost no one in the city survived. One who did was Ludger Sylbaris, a prisoner locked in a thick-walled jail cell that shielded him from the heat. Rescuers found him days later, badly burned but alive. He later toured with a circus as a man who had survived the end of the world.