The Weird Case Of The Volcano Which Popped Up From A Corn Field

I was looking for a suitable image, in the public domain, for Bonfire Night (5th of November) to put on my Google+ page and came across the above photo. It turned out not to be a bonfire but a volcano. I read that it was called Paricutin and was in Mexico.

A couple of days later I was looking through an old book from the 1950s. I’ve mentioned previously how I often buy old books. This particular one was a children’s annual called Lion. I remember the Lion comic from when I was a small child. I flicked through the pages and on page 123 I saw the following image from a section of the book called Facts from Near and Far.

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According to the1954 Lion annual: “One day in 1943, a Mexican farmer was amazed to find a volcano thrusting itself up through one of his fields. Given the name Paracutin, the volcano has built itself up to a height of 1,500 feet above ground – and it is still active!”

The photo at the top of the page was taken while the Paricutin was erupting in 1943 (the Lion spells the name of the volcano slightly differently).

I looked for more information and Wikipedia agrees with the version of events:

I have since read that the height of the volcano is 1,353 feet and is 9,186 feet above sea level. The eruptions continued from 1943 to 1952,

Must have been quite a shock for the farmer, Dionisio Pulido.

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