Volcanoes

Krakatoa
Description: In 1883, the volcano on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa erupted with 13,000 times the power of an atomic bomb. The sound of the spewing smoke and rock was reportedly heard thousands of miles away, as far as islands off the eastern coast of Africa. Hundreds in a nearby Sumatran town died almost instantly when flaming ash incinerated their homes, and many more were washed away by subsequent megatsunamis. An estimated 36,000 or so perished in total. Krakatoa itself then slumped into the boiling depths of the ocean, but a new island at the site was spotted in 1927, and it still occasionally spits lava into the sky. It's been dubbed Anak Krakatoa, or Child of Krakatoa.

Mount Pinatubo
Description: When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, the amount of sulfuric ash it sent into the stratosphere cooled global ground temperatures by 1°F for the next two years. To be fair, it hadn't erupted for six centuries, so there was some catching up to do. A year before the eruption, a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck about 60 miles northeast of Pinatubo, causing landslides and an increase in steam emissions from one of the volcano's geothermal areas, ultimately setting the stage for the 1991 explosion. While the eruption resulted in more than 700 deaths, many scientists predicted the explosion, thus saving the lives of an estimated 5,000. Still, the eruption produced one of the most dramatic environmental scenes ever witnessed. With ash that rose 22 miles into the sky, it is considered the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century.

Mount Vesuvius
Description: Mt. Vesuvius, the active volcano that looms over the Bay of Naples in southern Italy, has erupted well over 30 times that we know of. And yet its most famous eruption took place all the way back in A.D. 79, when a multiday eruption of lava and ash covered the cities of Pompeii and Stabiae in ash. Pliny the Younger, author of the only surviving eyewitness account, described a sudden explosion followed by blankets of ash that fell on people as they tried to escape. The total number of Vesuvius' victims will most likely never be known, but archeologists are aware of at least 1,000.

Mount Pelée
Description: Mount Pelée, standing more than 4,500 feet high on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, erupted violently in May 1902, killing nearly 30,000 people — effectively the entire port city of St. Pierre. The catastrophe was so devastating that the term pelean — to describe that particular kind of ash, gas and fiery cloud eruption — became part of volcanic vernacular. There had been warnings of steam, light earth shocks and raining ash, but they were ignored. After the town was wiped out, Pelée went dormant for some months, until geologists discovered a lava dome, dubbed the tower of Pelée, that rose to more than 1,000 feet above the crater floor before eventually crumbling in March 1903.

Mauna Loa
Description: It's fitting that the state created out of a chain of volcanic islands would be home to the world's largest volcano. Mauna Loa is located on the Big Island of Hawaii and in addition to being the largest, with a summit nearly 13,700 feet high, it is also one of the world's most active. Since 1843, Mauna Loa has erupted 33 times, most recently in 1984. At 60 miles long and 30 miles wide, Mauna Loa, the name of which fittingly means "Long Mountain" in Hawaiian, takes up about half of the Big Island. Its mass also amounts to 85% of all the other Hawaiian Islands combined.