Mixed eras

Mount Vesuvius erupts and buries the Roman city of Pompeii under meters of volcanic ash.

Residents leave behind half-eaten meals still on the table — one bakery's loaves of bread are found perfectly carbonized in their oven.

In 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius, a stratovolcano located in the modern-day region of Campania, Italy, erupted, causing one of the deadliest eruptions in history. Vesuvius violently ejected a cloud of super-heated tephra and gases to a height of 33 km (21 mi), ejecting molten rock, pulverized pumice and hot ash at 1.5 million tons per second, ultimately releasing 100,000 times the thermal energy of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The event gives its name to the Vesuvian type of volcanic eruption, characterised by columns of hot gases and ash reaching the stratosphere, although the event also included pyroclastic flows associated with Peléan eruptions.

📷 Wikimedia Commons

Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne emperor of the Romans in St. Peter's Basilica on Christmas Day.

Charlemagne later tells his biographer Einhard that he would not have entered the church that day had he known what the pope was planning.

Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768, King of the Lombards from 774, and Emperor of what is now known as the Carolingian Empire from 800. He united most of Western and Central Europe and was the first recognised emperor to rule from the west after the fall of the Western Roman Empire approximately three centuries earlier. Charlemagne's reign was marked by political and social changes that had lasting influence on Europe throughout the Middle Ages.

📷 Wikimedia Commons

The Black Death arrives in Florence, killing tens of thousands in a matter of months.

Giovanni Boccaccio, who witnesses the carnage firsthand, describes Florentines wearing flowers to their noses to ward off the stench — and the plague.

The Black Death reaches Florence, killing up to half the city's population and inspiring Boccaccio's Decameron.

Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II captures Constantinople after a 53-day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire.

Mehmed drags roughly 70 of his warships overland on greased wooden rails to bypass the massive chain blocking the Golden Horn harbor.

The Fall of Constantinople, also known as the Conquest of Constantinople, was the capture of Constantinople, the capital city of the Byzantine Empire, by the Ottoman Empire. The city was captured on 29 May 1453 as part of the culmination of a 53-day siege which had begun on 6 April.

📷 Wikimedia Commons

England's fleet defeats the Spanish Armada sent by King Philip II to invade the country.

More Spanish ships are wrecked by storms off the Irish coast than are sunk by English cannon fire.

The Spanish Armada was a Spanish fleet that sailed from Lisbon in late May 1588, and was the largest engagement of the undeclared Anglo-Spanish War. The Armada was commanded by Alonso de Guzmán, Duke of Medina Sidonia, an aristocrat appointed by Philip II of Spain. His orders were to sail up the English Channel, join with the army of Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma in Flanders, and escort an invasion force that would land in England and overthrow Elizabeth I. Its purpose was to reinstate Catholicism in England, end English support for the Dutch Republic in the north and prevent attacks by English and Dutch privateers against Spanish interests in the Americas.

📷 Wikimedia Commons

King Charles I raises his royal standard at Nottingham Castle, formally beginning the English Civil War.

The standard blows down in a gale that same night, which Royalist advisors take as a very bad omen.

The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Royalists and Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the struggle consisted of the First English Civil War and the Second English Civil War. The Anglo-Scottish war of 1650 to 1652 is sometimes referred to as the Third English Civil War.

📷 Wikimedia Commons

American colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians dump 342 chests of British tea into Boston Harbor.

The tea — belonging to the East India Company — is worth roughly £10,000, and not a single colonist is prosecuted for the destruction.

The Boston Tea Party was an act of protest on December 16, 1773 during the American Revolution. Initiated by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, one of the Thirteen Colonies of British America, it escalated hostilities between Great Britain and the Patriots, who opposed British policy towards its American colonies. Less than two years later, on April 19, 1775, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, also in Massachusetts, launched the eight-year American Revolutionary War, which resulted in the independence of the colonies as the United States.

📷 Wikimedia Commons

Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates the French throne and is exiled to the tiny Mediterranean island of Elba.

He is given sovereignty over the island and allowed to keep a personal army of 600 men — and almost immediately starts planning his escape.

Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates the French throne and is exiled to the island of Elba, briefly ending his domination of Europe.

The Suez Canal opens in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea for the first time.

The inaugural procession of ships gets stuck in a traffic jam when an Egyptian corvette runs aground and blocks the channel.

The opening of the Suez Canal connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas, slashing the shipping distance between Europe and Asia.

East Germany announces open borders and crowds of Berliners begin tearing down the Berlin Wall by hand.

The announcement is made by a flustered spokesman, Günter Schabowski, who hasn't fully read his briefing notes and accidentally says the crossing is open 'immediately, without delay.'

The Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989 during the Peaceful Revolution, marking the beginning of the destruction of the figurative Iron Curtain, as East Berlin transit restrictions were overwhelmed and discarded. Sections of the wall were breached, and planned deconstruction began the following June. It was one of the series of events that started the fall of communism in Central and Eastern Europe. The fall of the inner German border took place shortly afterward. An end to the Cold War was declared at the Malta Summit in early December, and German reunification took place in October the following year.

📷 Wikimedia Commons