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Horrific Facts from History that Will Invade Nightmares

Khalid Elhassan October 31, 2021 35 min

Hulagu and a cowering Caliph after the fall of Baghdad. Deadliest Blogger

Saint Pierre, before and after the horrific eruption of Mount Pelee. Earth Magazine

24. A Prosperous Town That Vanished Beneath an Incandescent Volcanic Cloud

A column of dense smoke shot skywards from the top of Mount Pelee and formed a mushroom cloud that darkened the sky for about 50 miles. Another dense cloud of glowing black smoke shot horizontally, straight into Saint Pierre. The cloud consisted of superheated steam, gasses, ashes, and dust known as tephra, and it raced into the city at a speed of nearly 420 miles per hour. All the town’s buildings were flattened, and the population was burned or suffocated to death.

Offshore, a witness in a steamship described the city’s horrific fate when the incandescent cloud hit: “The fire rolled down upon Saint Pierre. The town vanished before our eyes“. The eruption killed about 28,000 people in Saint Pierre – the town’s entire population, except for one man: Ludger Sylbaris. A manual laborer and frequent troublemaker, Sylbaris had gotten into a bar brawl on the night of May 7^th, just a few hours before the eruption. As seen below, his wayward ways saved Sylbaris’ life.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.