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It's Thursday, May 26th, 2020. I'm Jackson Bird today. The first human genome from a victim of the eruption in ancient Pompeii has been sequenced. Plus, a global mushroom art scavenger hunt is afoot. And Winnie the Pooh is joining the gritty origin story

bandwagon with a new horror take on the residents of the 100-acre wood. Here is some cool stuff for your

ride home. Mount Vesuvius erupted almost 2,000 years ago in 79 CE, killing thousands of residents in Pompeii and Herculaneum almost instantly, as intense heat, gas, ash, and pumice flooded the air.

Despite the destruction long leading us to believe DNA analysis of the human and animal victims would be fruitless,

we do have quite a bit of other information about one of our world's most epic natural disasters.

And part of that is due to the ash covering all of the buildings, keeping them well preserved through the millennia.

You may recall stories I've covered previously about

an ancient snack bar and ample lewd graffiti that have been found in Pompeii in recent years.

But another reason we have a lot of information is because Pliny the younger

witnessed the eruption from across the Bay of Naples and wrote the only surviving eyewitness

account we have of the event.

And it is thanks to Pliny that we know some of the exact times corresponding to the eruption.

But now technology has advanced enough that we can glean more from DNA analysis,

and scientists have just sequenced the genome of a man who was killed that fateful day.

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