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This Week In History, Library Style! Dec. 16: Volcanic

yellow and white smoke during night time
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Libraries are places where we connect people to information that may be useful or interesting to them. Looking at some history, and connecting it to the materials we may have in our libraries, can be a good way to convince patrons to use and enjoy all the things we provide!

This week we are looking at December 16. Of course a lot of things have happened on this date – news and the big stories are the unusual things that are going on around us. One interesting thing that has happened today in 1631: Mt. Vesuvius erupted in Italy.

“The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 destroyed the Roman cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis and Stabiae, as well as several other settlements. The eruption ejected a cloud of stones, ashes and volcanic gases to a height of 33 km (21 mi), erupting molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 6×105 cubic metres (7.8×105 cu yd) per second.[6] More than 1,000 people are thought to have died in the eruption, though the exact toll is unknown. The only surviving eyewitness account of the event consists of two letters by Pliny the Younger to the historian Tacitus.[7]“

Bring this historical fact to your library! You can do this with a variety of program and display ideas. We will help you to get started with a few ideas: set out books on volcanoes, have a talk about fire disasters, look at pictures of wildfires across the country, write down some disaster survival plans, make model volcanoes – and if you can take them outside throw in some chemicals to make them erupt, look at maps of Italy, learn some Italian words and phrases, make a map of active volcanoes aroudn the world, look at old diaries and first-person history reports.

Here are a few books you might add to your collection or share with your patrons – or just enjoy yourself!