The Day the Mountain Woke Up
August 23, 79 AD – It was on this day that Mount Vesuvius began stirring.
Unsettling tremors and strange cloud formations rattled the locals, but most of the residents of Pompeii and Herculaneum shrugged them off as nothing unusual.
Modern archaeologists have uncovered evidence that life carried on like any other day — markets bustled, bakers baked bread, families went about their routines — unaware that disaster was only hours away.
When Vesuvius finally erupted the following day, it unleashed one of antiquity’s deadliest catastrophes. Historians believe as many as 20,000 people perished — some suffocated under falling ash in Pompeii, while others were killed instantly by the scorching pyroclastic surges that raced through Herculaneum.
