#10: Mount Pelée (Martinique, 1902 CE)
At dawn, Pelée unleashed a firestorm that moved faster than wind. Within minutes, the city of Saint-Pierre was gone — erased by a pyroclastic wave hotter than any forge. Of its 30,000 inhabitants, only two survived: a sailor trapped in a stone cell and a prisoner in solitary confinement. The rest were vaporized in a breath of fire.
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The eruption changed volcanology forever, marking the birth of modern understanding of pyroclastic flows.