Hekla erupts in Iceland

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The mountain the Icelanders were already calling the Gateway to Hell split open and smothered a quarter of the island in ash. Farms in the Thjorsa valley, settled for generations, were abandoned overnight. It was the largest tephra fall since Iceland's colonization two centuries earlier, blanketing pastures in a grey crust that killed livestock and forced dozens of families to migrate north to less fertile ground.