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Do you know what a pyroclastic surge is? It’s when the boiling column of ash spewing out of a volcano drops and rebounds sideways off the slopes of the volcano like a really scary basketball. And by really scary basketball, I mean a poisonous cloud of debris so scorching hot that it vaporizes your clothes and, more unfortunately, your skin. You’re dead in an instant.
At least that’s what happened to the folks who were hanging out in boathouses on the beach facing Herculaneum in A.D. 79. You’ve probably heard of the massive Mount Vesuvius volcanic eruption that avalanched the wealthy coastal towns of Herculaneum and Pompeii. But did you know that the surge was 932 degrees Fahrenheit and that it boiled beachgoers’ brain tissue?
On Monday’s podcast, Sarah and I talked Pompeii, lost for so long under layers of volcanic ash.
It wasn’t just Pompeii that was buried by Mount Vesuvius’s eruption — Herculaneum, Stabiae, Torre, Annunziata and others were also destroyed. But it’s Pompeii that we first learn about in school, our ghoulish child eyes poring over photos of preserved, twisted bodies while we wonder what it’s like to be covered in lava.
Wednesday’s podcast took us back to the London Blitz, when Hitler turned his eye toward Great Britain.
Churchill proclaimed that “At all costs, St. Paul’s must be saved,” and this was the rallying cry for the volunteers and firefighters who stayed up all night watching the cathedral and putting out fires.
In 1916, a series of shark attacks took place along the shores of New Jersey. The media downplayed the first attack as a fluke — but the attacks continued. Tune in and learn more about the story that inspired Jaws in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.
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