The eruption was small — in volcanic terms, that is — producing only about 3% of the ash ejected by Mount St. Helens in 1980. Instead, it was the mudflows that made Colombia's 1985 Nevado del Ruiz explosion the second deadliest in the 20th century and the fourth deadliest in recorded history. ...
Some 3,500 years ago, an event of cataclysmic proportions rocked the Mediterranean. The volcano at Thera (later known as the Greek island of Santorini) exploded with what is estimated at four to five times the eruptive force of Krakatoa in 1883, blowing a hole into the Aegean isle and sending out ...
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 ...
It was like an overly contrived disaster flick: A mammoth cloud of ash from an Icelandic volcano creeps across the European continent, shutting down airports and stranding hundreds of thousands for days. Across the globe, people curse the volcano — or attempt to, since few can actually pronounce ...
The Volcanic Explosivity Index goes up to 8. On that scale, the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora rates a very destructive 7. The explosion took place on the island of Sumbawa (then in the Dutch East Indies, now in Indonesia) and plunged the region into darkness, but its effects were anything but ...
Most agree that Frank Lloyd Wright is the most famous architect of the modern era, if not all of history. Along with Louis Henri Sullivan, his early mentor, he helped form a uniquely American architecture. Wright favored the Prairie School of architecture, which came out of the Midwest United ...
Born in Canada in 1929 and having moved to the United States as a teenager, Frank Gehry eventually became a leading force in the deconstructionist and postmodern styles of architecture. As opposed to the rigid, utilitarian tendencies of the International Style, Gehry explores irregular forms and ...
Born in 1917 in China, Ieoh Ming Pei came to the United States in the 1930s to study architecture. However, by the time he graduated, he wasn't able to return to China due to the outbreak of World War II. Instead, he stayed in the United States, eventually becoming a citizen in 1954. In his ...
