Being dormant for almost eighty years, the residents of nearby Vesuvius town Pompeii thought that the volcano was no threat to their lives. Well, they were wrong. On the morning of August 24, 79 A.D. Vesuvius had one its most violent eruptions, which led to the complete destruction of two Italian cities.

Long before the great eruption, Vesuvius had been an active volcano, which Roman Legend described as being used as a battleground of the gods. Two large earthquakes in 63 A.D. and 64 A.D. shook the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum knocking over statues and even destroying buildings. The people rebuilt and took the earthquakes as no threat. On the morning of the Vesuvius' greatest eruption the mountain rumbled, the top split and spewed flaming ash, cinders, and pumice, twelve miles into the sky. Flowing lava and mud streams soon filled and destroyed, the city of Herculaneum and...