I found this photograph in the National Archives. It was taken on April 10, 1944, so it’s a little outside our timeframe here on Old Spirituals, but it’s a magnificent picture. They named it Electricity over Vesuvius. It’s the electricity that amazes me. Can you imagine what the ancients thought when the volcanoes erupted long ago?

The NARA photo came with this inscription: “Night photo of Mt. Vesuvius in eruption, shows red hot lava streaming down the mountain and an accumulation of static electricity cracking over the fiery crater.”

National Archives

I was wondering what a volcanic eruption sounds like and came across some videos by a man named Giuseppe Distefano, who studies Mt. Etna. He takes the most incredible footage and there’s no sound except the wind and the sound of the explosion.

Here’s one example:

I read a book once about cultural events in the 1920s (I don’t recall its name) and it included some anecdotes about how people around the world reacted to the tragic and shocking death of Rudolph Valentino. One story that sticks with me was that two of his teenaged fans in Japan were so overcome with despair at the news that they had leapt into a volcano in response.  It sounds too wild to be true but you never know!

Rudolph Valentino