most amazing volcanoes

This image provided by Nasa shows the sun releasing a flare associated with a prominence eruption in 2012. The image was captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory.

When Krakatoa (also spelled Krakatau) blew its top in 1883, it did so with the force of 13,000 atomic bombs. No, really, its true. They heard the Indonesian island go all the way in Australia, and tsunamis, ashes and toxic fumes overtook entire islands nearby. All in all, over 36,000 people lost their lives and whole villages just went away. The shockwave reverberated around the globe, registering on barographs thousands of miles away. The 1883 eruption destroyed almost the entire island, but, lest there be any doubt that the area is still active, a new island, dubbed Anak Krakatau (child of Krakatau) has risen in its place ... and it gets bigger every day.

When Mt. Pelee exploded on the Caribbean island of Martinique in 1902, it killed 29,000 people and destroyed the entire city of St. Pierre. The residents had been watching the volcano shoot steam and sulfurous fumes into the air for several days, but on May 8, Pelee finally went in a terrifying display. Witnesses on ships just off its coast described a sudden massive mushroom cloud, filled with fiery hot ash and volcanic gases, consuming the island in seconds. Only two people survived the explosion, one of them a prisoner in a jail cell who was saved by his poorly ventilated, cavernlike accommodations. Sometimes your curse is your salvation.

When Mt. Vesuvius blew in A.D. 79, it left the entire city of Pompeii frozen in time, buried under a shroud of ash and pumice that rained down for nearly an entire day as the volcano raged. The 25,000 or so people that it buried were preserved for archaeologists to one day study and the volcano itself has now also been extensively studied. Its erupted over a dozen times since the burial of Pompeii, most recently in 1944. Since the area surrounding it in Italy is now pretty densely populated, lets hope it doesnt do that again any time soon.

The Santa Maria eruption in 1902 was one of the largest eruptions of the 20th century. The violent explosion came after the volcano had sat silent for roughly 500 years, and left a large crater, nearly a mile (1.5 km) across, on the mountains southwest flank.The symmetrical, treecovered volcano is part of a chain of stratovolcanoes that rises along Guatemalas Pacific coastal plain. It has experienced continuous activity since its last blast, a VEI 3, which occurred in 1922. In 1929, Santa Maria spewed forth a a pyroclastic flow (a fastmoving wall of scalding gas and pulverized rock), which claimed hundreds of lives and may have killed as many as 5,000 people.