David Cannadine: Man and Volcano, an Explosive History
[David Cannadine is the author of The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy and Ornamentalism.]
On a recent flight from Britain to the United States, my plane took a circuitous route to avoid the by-now-all-too-familiar volcanic ash, with the paradoxical result that we flew much nearer to Iceland, and much nearer to the volcano, than we otherwise would've done.
It was certainly worth the detour, as my fellow passengers and I were treated to a grandstand view of one of nature's most extraordinary and terrifying spectacles: billowing smoke, pillars of fire, and molten lava.
Even when glimpsed from the safe distance of 30,000 feet, this was "shock and awe" with a vengeance, reminiscent of the scenes so vividly described in the letters written by Pliny the Younger to Tacitus when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.
No wonder the ancient world was so fascinated by volcanoes: the Greeks thought that eruptions were a sign of divine disapproval; and the word volcano derives from the small Mediterranean island of Vulcano, named after Vulcan, who was the Roman god of fire.
The travel arrangements of many people have been seriously disrupted in recent months by the ash which has spewed forth from the Icelandic volcano which has a completely unpronounceable name.
And it seems highly unlikely that any of these grounded passengers would've been much comforted by the knowledge that this is not the first time that volcanic eruptions in Iceland have caused such serious inconvenience - and, indeed, much more than mere inconvenience.
In 1783, one such eruption killed about a fifth of Iceland's population, and it sent a huge cloud of toxic ash and sulphurous gases across Western Europe, with the result that in Britain alone, 23,000 people were thought to have died from the poisoning....
Read entire article at BBC News
On a recent flight from Britain to the United States, my plane took a circuitous route to avoid the by-now-all-too-familiar volcanic ash, with the paradoxical result that we flew much nearer to Iceland, and much nearer to the volcano, than we otherwise would've done.
It was certainly worth the detour, as my fellow passengers and I were treated to a grandstand view of one of nature's most extraordinary and terrifying spectacles: billowing smoke, pillars of fire, and molten lava.
Even when glimpsed from the safe distance of 30,000 feet, this was "shock and awe" with a vengeance, reminiscent of the scenes so vividly described in the letters written by Pliny the Younger to Tacitus when Vesuvius erupted in AD 79.
No wonder the ancient world was so fascinated by volcanoes: the Greeks thought that eruptions were a sign of divine disapproval; and the word volcano derives from the small Mediterranean island of Vulcano, named after Vulcan, who was the Roman god of fire.
The travel arrangements of many people have been seriously disrupted in recent months by the ash which has spewed forth from the Icelandic volcano which has a completely unpronounceable name.
And it seems highly unlikely that any of these grounded passengers would've been much comforted by the knowledge that this is not the first time that volcanic eruptions in Iceland have caused such serious inconvenience - and, indeed, much more than mere inconvenience.
In 1783, one such eruption killed about a fifth of Iceland's population, and it sent a huge cloud of toxic ash and sulphurous gases across Western Europe, with the result that in Britain alone, 23,000 people were thought to have died from the poisoning....