By tradition, the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum began on 24 August in AD 79. Thousands of people died, in the towns and along the shore, and many were never identified.
The first careful eyewitness account we have comes from Pliny the Younger, who was a teenager at Bagni di Miseno across the bay. He wrote two letters to the historian Tacitus some twenty-five years later, describing the column of ash and the darkness and the falling debris. His uncle, Pliny the Elder, took ships across to help people leave and died on the beach near Stabiae. The nephew recorded that too, plainly.
The August date comes from the manuscript tradition of those letters. Later evidence from the site, including autumn produce, heating braziers in use and a charcoal inscription found in 2018, points to an eruption some weeks afterwards, in the autumn. Historians now treat October as more likely. The date is uncertain. The loss is not.
Nearly every excavated Pompeian house had its lararium, a small painted shrine for the household spirits, and the ash preserved what was left there that morning: eggs, nuts, a little wine, lamps still set out. Ordinary people asking, as they did every day, for the house to be kept safe.
The gardens were preserved too, Ada. Archaeologists poured plaster into the root cavities left in the ash and recovered the shape of vines and trees, which is how we know how the vineyards and orchards were planted; carbonised figs, walnuts and other autumn produce survive from the sites, and that ripe fruit is part of the case for the later date.