The virus behind the common cold is much happier in a cold nose, US researchers show.

The way the eruption of Vesuvius struck Herculaneum was different than what happened in Pompeii. While Pompeii was being showered in pumice rock, trapping people who sought shelter and causing roofs to come down on them, Herculaneum was unaffected on the first day of the eruption. Then the wind changed and the great pillar of ash and smoke collapsed, unleashing a pyroclastic surge of boiling gases and ash at temperatures exceeding 800F that engulfed the town. Everyone there was killed instantly and wood was carbonized on the spot. Herculaneum was then hit by six floods of volcanic mud, one after the other, burying under 70 feet of sludge. The mud quickly cooled and hardened into solid rock, leaving the entire city under a massive air-tight layer of volcanic tufa. No oxygen could penetrate it, and all that carbonized organic material, from morsels of food to entire villa roofs, was preserved for 2,000 years.