Volcanoes Facts

The Aztecs and other Mesoamerican peoples believed powerful gods dwelled within volcanoes. To appease these deities, they performed human sacrifices—sometimes throwing victims directly into volcanic craters.

A volcano has enough power to shoot ash as high as 50 km into the atmosphere.

Olympus Mons on Mars is the tallest volcano in the Solar System, standing approximately 13.6 miles (22 km) high. It is nearly 2.5 times the height of Mount Everest.

In 1974, prankster Porky Bickar was so into April Fools, he flew hundreds of tires into a dormant volcano in Alaska and set them on fire - fooling the local populace and coast guard into thinking the volcano was active.

Mount St. Helens threw a forest into Spirit Lake in 1980, and thousands of those logs still float there today. The landslide raised the lake about 200 feet and buried its outlet. To stop it bursting out and flooding the towns below, the Army Corps built a tunnel over a mile and a half long through a ridge, finished in 1985. It is still the lake's only drain, and it keeps buckling.

The Dallol springs in Ethiopia glow neon yellow and acid green - and their pH drops below zero, lower than battery acid. In 2019, scientists found no life in the harshest pools despite the liquid water. Liquid water alone is not enough for life.

Mount St. Helens grew a brand-new glacier inside the crater its 1980 eruption left behind. Snow and rockfall piled up in the shade of the crater walls until the ice began to flow. In 2004 a new lava dome punched through it and cut it in half, but the two arms flowed around the dome and merged again by 2008. Crater Glacier is still creeping across the crater floor today.