Ground Shaking Records
On this day way back in 1556, the Shaanxi earthquake claimed the lives of up to 830,000 people in China, making it the greatest loss of life to a natural disaster. Here are some more records to make you quake in your boots:
Longest earthquake
The Sumatra-Andaman Islands earthquake in the Indian Ocean, on 26 December 2004, was the longest-lasting ever recorded. Its duration, monitored by seismometers all over the world, was measured at between 500 and 600 seconds. It had an earthquake magnitude of between 9.1 and 9.3. These results were announced in the journal Science in May 2005.
Most powerful earthquake
The most powerful instrumentally measured earthquake is generally acknowledged to be the Chilean earthquake of May 22, 1960, which had a magnitude of 8.3 on the Richter scale (9.5 Mw.). In Chile it killed more than 2,000, injured 3,000 and left and estimated 2 million people homeless, but the resultant tsumani (giant wave) caused massive damage and around 200 deaths thousands of kilometers away in Hawaii, Japan and the US west coast.
Worst devastation due to an earthquake
The greatest physical devastation was in the earthquake on the Kanto plain, Japan, of 1 Sep 1923 (Mag. Ms=8.19, epicentre at Lat. 35°15N, Long. 139°30E). In Tokyo and Yokohama 575,000 dwellings were destroyed. The official total of persons killed and missing in this Dai-Shinsai, or great quake and resultant fires, was 142,807.
Longest post-earthquake survival by a cat
In December 1999, 80 days following an earthquake that struck Taiwan on 21 September killing an estimated 2,400 people, a cat was discovered alive after being trapped by a message board that had fallen during the quake and pinned the cat to ground in the rubble of a collapsed building in Taichung, Taiwan. The cat, dehydrated and barely breathing, weighed less than half the weight of a healthy cat that size and was rushed to a veterinary hospital where it made a full recovery.
Earliest seismograph
The first modern seismographs were developed in 1848, but the earliest form of earthquake-detecting equipment can be traced all the way back to 132 AD and the Han Dynasty in China. The first device was designed by the then Chinese Astronomer Royal, Chang Heng, who built a 15 cm (6 in) bronze vessel containing a pendulum. Any minor movement in the ground would cause the pendulum to dislodge balls which would fall into the mouths of bronze toads, signalling an earthquake.
23 January 2008