Thread by @MiningNS

Happy Vulcanalia!
Yesterday was the ancient festival to celebrate Vulcan, the Roman god of fire who was renowned for his metalworking skills.
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As a son of Jupiter, Vulcan was the creator of his father's lightning bolts. He also made armor, weapons and jewelry for the gods and heroes of Rome.
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Volcanoes are named after him. It’s said that every time his wife, Venus, was unfaithful – which was apparently quite a lot – he got angry and hammered red-hot metal at his forge with such ferocity that it created volcanic eruptions.
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Vulcanalia is an annual festival on August 23 that honours Vulcan+seeks protection for the harvest. Unfortunately, sacrificing fish and boar to him in bonfires hasn't always worked - the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii took place the day after Vulcanalia in 79 A.D.
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Ancient peoples often had myths/stories that explained geological events. For example, some geologists think the story of Noah's Ark may have been influenced by a catastrophic flooding event in the Black Sea around 5,000 B.C.
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Atlantis probably wasn’t a real place, but a real island may have inspired the tale. Greece's Santorini is now an archipelago, but thousands of years ago it was a single island—a volcano named Thera.
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Around 3,500 years ago, the volcano blew up in one of the biggest eruptions in human history, destroying the island and triggering tsunamis.
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