“Geologising in a Volcanic country is most delightful,…[]” Geologist Charles Darwin in a letter to his father Darwin is today remembered for his gradualistic view of earth’s history, an essential prerequisite for his view of life, as he concludes in 1859 ” from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have [...]

“Therefore on my return to Shropshire I examined sections and coloured a map of parts round Shrewsbury.” Darwin in his autobiography (1876) “A map is always a decisive criterion of they who aspire to the rank of geologists [E]very one who has not compiled a map, wants the necessary talent of combination . The spirited [...]

The Russian scholar Mikhail Vasil´evich Lomonosov (1711-1765) was a typical polymath of his time, dedicated to poetry, art, literature, history, philosophy, meteorology, astronomy, chemistry and mineralogy. Born into a relatively wealthy fisherman and trader family from the village of Denisovka (North Russia) he got interested in natural science in early years accompanying his father on [...]

The lake of Alleghe in the valley of Cordévole is today exactly 242 years old. The moment of the birth of the lake is well known, at 7:02 in the morning of January 11, 1771 the river flowing through the valley became dammed by a landslide coming from the mountain Piz. Fig.1. General view of [...]

In just one day and one night – August 24 to 25 – in 79 A.D. a sequence of deadly pyroclastic currents coming from Mount Vesuvius destroyed and buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. But this volcano, periodically active and despite his modest size considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes of the world, [...]

“It was nothing of this earth, but a piece of the great outside; and as such dowered with outside properties and obedient to outside laws.” “The Colour Out of Space“, by H.P. Lovecraft (1927) In the morning of June, 30 1908 eyewitnesses reported a large fireball crossing the sky above the taiga of the Stony [...]

October 1792 the crew of the “H.M.S. Discovery“, surveying the western coasts of the American continent, spotted a mountain and named it after the British diplomat Alleyne FitzHerbert, 1st Baron St. Helens (1753-1839). The true origin of Mount St. Helens was revealed to the naturalists only in 1835, when a minor eruption revealed its volcanic [...]

The fossil forests of Specimen Ridge and Amethyst Mountain, both situated in the area of the Yellowstone National Park, are peculiar because of many preserved trees still standing upright. The geologist, anthropologist and artist Dr. William H. Holmes was the first naturalist to study the outcrop of Amethyst Mountain and to publish his observations in [...]

“My Dear Sister: This morning the whole population of the city is on the alert and every eye is directed toward Mont Pelee, an extinct volcano. Everybody is afraid that the volcano has taken into its heart to burst forth and destroy the whole island.” Mrs. Thomas T. Prentis, wife of the United States Consul [...]

The first U.S. scientists and journalists arrived May 21, 1902 and soon researchers from the United Kingdom and France followed. Just 13 days earlier the city of Saint-Pierre, on the Caribbean island of Martinique, had been annihilated by an unknown volcanic phenomenon. The geologists were baffled by the extant and pattern of the destruction inside [...]