Today we will be traveling to Mount Vesuvius. Mt. Vesuvius, is the active volcano that looms over the Bay of Naples in the south of Italy, has erupted more 30 times that we know of. And yet its most famous eruption happend all the way back in A.D. 79, when a multiday eruption of lava and volcanic ash covered the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae. 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. Volcanos are formed on divergent boundrys, when the ground splits apart and magma and lava bubble out. Mt. Vesuvius is on the divergent boundry of the African and Eurasian tectonic plates.