Eruption of Vesuvius (AD 79 (August 24 or October 24))

At about one in the afternoon a cloud shaped like a pine rose over the mountain. For more than a dozen hours pumice fell on Pompeii; at night avalanches of hot gas destroyed Herculaneum, and on the morning of the second day they reached Pompeii and Stabiae. At Stabiae died Pliny the Elder, commander of the fleet at Misenum.

Titus sent commissioners to Campania and devoted the estates of the dead without heirs to rebuilding. The date is disputed: the manuscripts of Pliny’s letters give August 24, while an inscription of 2018 and the finds point rather to October 24.