A quiz question · hard
Where and how did Pliny the Elder die during the Vesuvius eruption of 79 AD?
Pliny the Elder commanded the Roman fleet at Misenum and sailed across the Bay of Naples on a rescue mission. Floating pumice prevented landing near Herculaneum so he diverted to Stabiae and stayed at his friend Pomponianus's villa. When the second pyroclastic surge reached Stabiae the next morning Pliny — asthmatic and overweight — collapsed on the beach and could not be revived. The household survived.
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The Eighteen Hours That Stopped Pompeii On 24 October 79 AD Vesuvius opened above the Bay of Naples and buried two Roman towns under twenty feet of pumice and ash. The people who died in Pompeii were killed in the first wave of the second day, by a cloud of superheated gas at six hundred degrees Celsius.
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