The Day the Sky Fell

In the autumn of 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted with a force tens of thousands of times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. The eruption column shot 33 kilometers into the sky.

Pompeii, a thriving Roman resort city of 11,000 people, sat just 8 kilometers away. When the pyroclastic flows reached the city, temperatures exceeded 300 degrees Celsius, killing every remaining resident almost instantly.

The city stayed buried for centuries. Parts were encountered in the late 1500s during Sarno aqueduct work, while major excavations began in 1748 and eventually revealed the city to modern archaeology.