Jordan Karlesson
An American tourist survived a fall into the crater of Mount Vesuvius, the legendary volcano that turned the Italian city of Pompeii into ash, while trying to take a selfie on Saturday, NBC reports.
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American tourist Philip Carroll, 23, of Maryland, reportedly plummeted into the crater at the top of the 4,000-feet-high volcano after he and two family members hiked up a trail closed to tourists.
Paolo Cappelli — president of the Presidio Permanente Vesuvio, located at the top of Vesuvius where tour guides coordinate — said Carroll fell after trying to retrieve his phone during his botched attempt at taking a selfie.
“He tried to recover it but slipped and slid a few meters into the crater,” Cappelli said. “He managed to stop his fall, but at that point, he was stuck. … He was very lucky. If he kept going, he would have plunged 300 meters into the crater.”
The incident happened on the same weekend as another selfie-gone-wrong. Two irritated sea lions cleared a popular beach in the middle of tourist season at California’s La Jolla Beach when a woman tried to snap a selfie with the cuddly-looking half-ton water mammals.
Charlianne Yeyna captured the entire scene on camera and posted it to TikTok, where it’s gone viral with over 1.3 million views.
“The sea lions were sleeping and were just massive on the beach, and I was just watching them and this woman got really close to them, like 4 feet away, and was trying to take a photo of it up close, and it just woke up and started chasing everybody,” Yeyna told San Diego’s NBC 7.
“I started recording because it was really funny to watch, for me to see all these tourists getting blown away by these giant sea lions,” she said.
