- The Paricutin
eruption took place between February 1943 and February 1952.
- The Paricutin volcano
grew out of a cornfield.
- The worst of
Paricutin's volcanic activity, took place in 1943, with its lava
rising to about 50 feet below the crater's rim.
- The Paricutin volcano
now stands at exactly 1,345
feet above the ground and 9,210 feet above sea level.
- It hardened lava is
covers about 10 square miles, its volcanic sand (unconsolidated
fragments of volcanic material) covers about 20 square miles
- The type of eruption
which happened at Paricutin is called a Strombolian eruption, which
means it gushed basaltic lava, and exploded from a single vent.
- Nearly 1000 people died
following one of its last major eruptions in 1949.
- Paricutin is situated
about 200 miles west of Mexico City, in the state of Michoacán,
Mexico.
- Ashes from the volcano
fell as far as Mexico City.
- The Paricutin is part
of the Volcanic Axis, a.k.a., "The Transversal", a 700 mile line of
volcanoes that extends across southern Mexico in an east-west
direction.
- It is the only one of
several hundred cones in the area to have erupted in historic times.
- The Paricutin is a
Monogenetic cone, meaning it stems from a single point of eruption.
- The man who first
Witnessed the eruption in 1943, was
Dominic Pulido, a Tarascan Indian farmer.
- "Flaco" is a fictitious
composite character, created to facilitate the telling of the story.
- Paricutin is named
after a small Tarascan Indian village
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