What’s So Bad About the Badlands? - Don't Know Much About Geography - page 34

1692, June 7—Port Royal, Jamaica A center of British colonial activity and a home port to pirates
of the Spanish Main, Port Royal was hit by three shocks that destroyed two thirds of the city, killing
thousands. (In 1907, the city was hit again and destroyed by fire following the quake.)
1755, November—Portugal One of the most severe recorded earthquakes leveled Lisbon, a
crowded port city with a population of more than 200,000. Buildings swayed and then fell as the
city was hit by shocks felt as far away as southern France, North Africa, and even the United States.
A sea wave reached as far as the West Indies. The series of quakes that hit Lisbon raised some parts
of the coast as much as twenty feet and killed 10,000 to 20,000 people (other estimates are as high
as 60,000).
1811, December 16—New Madrid, Missouri Although it is called the greatest earthquake to strike
the continental United States, because the land was sparsely populated, this major quake produced
few casualties. But its effects were dramatic. The ground rose and fell and the earth opened up in
deep cracks. Great waves were created on the Mississippi River, whose course was changed in the
quake's aftershocks two weeks later.
1897, June 12—Assam, India This Himalayan region was hit by a shock as large as the New Mad-
rid quake, with dramatic results. The Assam Hills were uplifted by about twenty feet.
1908, December 28—Messina, Italy An estimated 85,000 people were killed and the city des-
troyed by a powerful earthquake.
1915, January 13—Avezzano, Italy This earthquake left 29,980 dead.
1920, December 16—Gansu (Kansu) Province, China Another huge Chinese earthquake, which
killed 200,000.
1923, September 1—Japan Three shocks of 8.3 magnitude rumbled across the Kwanto Plain in
Honshu, the principal island of Japan. Huge fissures appeared and landslides changed the land-
scape. Fires started as cooking stoves overturned and set wooden homes aflame, turning the cities
of Yokohama and Tokyo into infernos. Most of Yokohama was destroyed, and Tokyo was almost as
severely damaged by the earthquake and fires, leaving 1 million homeless and 140,000 dead—about
the same number as were killed in the fire bombings of Tokyo in World War II and the atomic strikes
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
1935, May 31—India An earthquake in Quetta (in modern Pakistan) killed 50,000.
1939, January 24—Chile Thirty thousand people were killed when an earthquake razed 50,000
square miles of countryside.
1950, August 15—Assam, India Twenty thousand to 30,000 were killed in Assam in one of the
most violent quakes in modern times. Registering 8.7 on the Richter scale, its energy was compared
to 100,000 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs. The quake was accompanied by ear-splitting noises and
sharp explosions produced by the collapsing underground rock structures.