Notable earthquakes in history

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Notable earthquakes in history

year affected area magnitude intensity approximate number of deaths comments

c. 1500 BC Knossos, Crete (Greece) ... X ... One of several events that leveled the capital of Minoan civilization, this quake accompanied the explosion of the nearby volcanic island of Thera.

27 BC Thebes (Egypt) ... ... ... This quake cracked one of the statues known as the Colossi of Memnon, and for almost two centuries the "singing Memnon" emitted musical tones on certain mornings as it was warmed by the Sun's rays.

AD 62 Pompeii and Herculaneum (Italy) ... X ... These two prosperous Roman cities had not yet recovered from the quake of 62 when they were buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius (Vesuvius) in 79.

115 Antioch (Antakya, Turkey) ... XI ... A centre of Hellenistic and early Christian culture, Antioch suffered many devastating quakes; this one almost killed the visiting Roman emperor Trajan.

1556 Shaanxi (Shensi) province (China) ... IX 830,000 This may have been the deadliest earthquake ever recorded.

1650 Cuzco (Peru) 8.1 VIII ... Many of Cuzco's Baroque monuments date to the rebuilding of the city after this quake.

1692 Port Royal (Jamaica) ... ... 2,000 Much of this British West Indies port, a notorious haven for buccaneers and slave traders, sank beneath the sea following the quake.

1693 southeastern Sicily (Italy) ... XI 93,000 Syracuse, Catania, and Ragusa were almost completely destroyed but were rebuilt with a Baroque splendour that still attracts tourists.

1755 Lisbon, Portugal ... XI 62,000 The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 was felt as far away as Algiers and caused a tsunami that reached the Caribbean.

1780 Tabriz (Tabrīz) (Iran) 7.7 ... 200,000 This ancient highland city was destroyed and rebuilt, as it had been in 791, 858, 1041, and 1721 and would be again in 1927.

1811–12 New Madrid, Mo. (U.S.) 8.0 to 8.8 XII ... A series of quakes at the New Madrid Fault caused few deaths, but the New Madrid earthquake of 1811–12 (New Madrid earthquakes of 1811–12) rerouted portions of the Mississippi River and was felt from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

1812 Caracas (Venezuela) 9.6 X 26,000 A provincial town in 1812, Caracas recovered and eventually became Venezuela's capital.

1835 Concepción, Chile 8.5 ... 35 British naturalist Charles Darwin, witnessing this quake, marveled at the power of the Earth to destroy cities and alter landscapes.

1886 Charleston, S.C., U.S. ... IX 60 This was one of the largest quakes ever to hit the eastern United States.

1895 Ljubljana (Slovenia) 6.1 VIII ... Modern Ljubljana is said to have been born in the rebuilding after this quake.

1906 San Francisco, Calif., U.S. 7.9 XI 700 San Francisco still dates its modern development from the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the resulting fires.

1908 Messina and Reggio di Calabria, Italy 7.5 XII 110,000 These two cities on the Strait of Messina were almost completely destroyed in what is said to be Europe's worst earthquake ever.

1920 Gansu province, China 8.5 ... 200,000 Many of the deaths in this quake-prone province were caused by huge landslides.

1923 Tokyo-Yokohama (Tokyo-Yokohama Metropolitan Area), Japan 7.9 ... 142,800 Japan's capital and its principal port, located on soft alluvial ground, suffered severely from the Tokyo-Yokohama earthquake of 1923.

1931 Hawke Bay, New Zealand 7.9 ... 256 The bayside towns of Napier and Hastings were rebuilt in an Art Deco style that is now a great tourist attraction.

1935 Quetta (Pakistan) 7.5 X 20,000 The capital of Balochistan province was severely damaged in the most destructive quake to hit South Asia in the 20th century.

1948 Ashgabat (Turkmenistan) 7.3 X 176,000 Every year, Turkmenistan commemorates the utter destruction of its capital in this quake.

1950 Assam, India 8.7 X 574 The largest quake ever recorded in South Asia killed relatively few people in a lightly populated region along the Indo-Chinese border.

1960 Valdivia and Puerto Montt, Chile 9.5 XI 5,700 The Chile earthquake of 1960, the largest quake ever recorded in the world, produced a tsunami that crossed the Pacific Ocean to Japan, where it killed more than 100 people.

1963 Skopje, Macedonia 6.9 X 1,070 The capital of Macedonia had to be rebuilt almost completely following this quake.

1964 Prince William Sound, Alaska, U.S. 9.2 ... 131 Anchorage, Seward, and Valdez were damaged, but most deaths in the Alaska earthquake of 1964 were caused by tsunamis in Alaska and as far away as California.

1972 Managua, Nicaragua 6.2 ... 10,000 The centre of the capital of Nicaragua was almost completely destroyed and has never been rebuilt.

1976 Guatemala City, Guatemala 7.5 IX 23,000 Rebuilt following a series of devastating quakes in 1917-18, the capital of Guatemala again suffered great destruction.

1976 Tangshan, China 8.0 X 242,000 In the Tangshan earthquake of 1976, this industrial city was almost completely destroyed in the worst earthquake disaster in modern history.

1985 Michoacán state and Mexico City, Mexico 8.1 IX 10,000 The centre of Mexico City, built largely on the soft subsoil of an ancient lake, suffered great damage in the Mexico City earthquake of 1985.

1988 Spitak and Gyumri, Armenia 6.8 X 25,000 This quake destroyed nearly one-third of Armenia's industrial capacity.

1989 Loma Prieta, Calif., U.S. 7.1 IX 62 This first sizable movement of the San Andreas Fault since 1906 collapsed a section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

1994 Northridge, Calif., U.S. 6.8 IX 60 Centred in the urbanized San Fernando Valley, this quake collapsed freeways and some buildings, but damage was limited by earthquake-resistant construction.

1995 Kobe (Kōbe), Japan 6.9 XI 5,502 The Great Hanshin Earthquake destroyed or damaged 200,000 buildings and left 300,000 people homeless.

1999 İzmit, Turkey 7.4 X 17,000 The industrial city of Izmit and the naval base at Golcuk were heavily damaged.

1999 Nan-t'ou county, Taiwan 7.7 X 2,400 The Taiwan earthquake of 1999, the worst to hit Taiwan since 1935, provided a wealth of digitized data for seismic and engineering studies.

2001 Bhuj, Gujarat (Gujarāt) state, India 8.0 X 20,000 This quake, possibly the deadliest ever to hit India, was felt across India and Pakistan.

2003 Bam, Iran 6.6 IX 26,000 This ancient Silk Road fortress city, built mostly of mud brick, was almost completely destroyed.

2004 Aceh province, Sumatra, Indonesia 9.0 ... 200,000 The deaths resulting from this offshore quake actually were caused by a tsunami that, in addition to killing more than 150,000 in Indonesia, killed people as far away as Sri Lanka and Somalia.

2005 Azad Kashmir (Pakistani-administered Kashmir) 7.6 VIII 80,000 This shock, perhaps the deadliest ever to strike South Asia, left hundreds of thousands of people exposed to the coming winter weather.

2008 Sichuan province, China 7.9 ... 69,000 This quake left over 5 million people homeless across the region, and over half of Beichuan City was destroyed by the initial seismic event and the release of water from a lake formed by nearby landslides.

Data source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Geophysical Data Center, Significant Earthquake Database, a searchable online database using the Catalog of Significant Earthquakes 2150 B.C.-1991 A.D., with addenda.

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