BOOOOOM! Goes the volcano...

It starts off as a rumble of not-so-distant thunder. Then the sound quickly escalates into the roar of a jet engine at take off. By now, it has your complete attention, so you are staring at the column of fire (and, well, brimstone) that's shooting twenty or thirty feet up into the air from the top of the crater! That's Stromboli; it does this about every 20 minutes, and has been doing so for the past 40,000 years, roughly. It's a tiny little spec of an island off the coast of Sicily, which is one of the youngest, and thus most active, volcanoes in the world. But it's not real big on huge, destructive lava flows, just a column of fire every 20 minutes to entertain the tourists.

BOOOOOM! It's awesome...