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Unusual Historic Crises and Calamities

Khalid Elhassan April 16, 2020 34 min

14. A Calamity for Contemporaries, a Blessing for Historians

The excavated ruins of Pompeii, with Vesuvius in the background. Pintrest

About 1500 bodies were found in Pompeii and Herculaneum when they were unearthed centuries later. They were recovered from but a small area that was impacted by the volcano’s eruption, and extrapolating to the surrounding regions, total casualties are estimated to have been in the tens of thousands.

The towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, whose populations at the time numbered about 20,000, were buried beneath up to 20 feet of volcanic ash and pumice. Tragic and terrifying as that was, the ash deposits did a remarkably effective job of preserving those towns nearly entire. That afforded future historians and scholars an unrivaled snapshot of 1^st century AD Roman architecture, city planning, urban infrastructure, and town life in general.

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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.