Major historical earthquakes are listed chronologically in the table.
| Notable earthquakes in history | ||||||
| year | affected area | magnitude* | intensity* | approximate number of deaths | comments | |
| c. 1500 BCE | 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 BCE | 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. | ||||
| 62 CE | 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 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 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 before being 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 | 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, Missouri, U.S. | 7.5 to 7.7 | XII | A series of quakes at the New Madrid Fault caused few deaths, but the New Madrid earthquake 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, South Carolina, 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, California, 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, 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 | 1,655 | 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. | ||
| 1970 | Chimbote, Peru | 7.9 | 70,000 | Most of the damage and loss of life resulting from the Ancash earthquake of 1970 was caused by landslides and the collapse of poorly constructed buildings. | ||
| 1972 | Managua, Nicaragua | 6.2 | 10,000 | The centre of the capital of Nicaragua was almost completely destroyed; the business section was later rebuilt some 6 miles (10 km) away. | ||
| 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 | 7.5 | X | 242,000 | In the Tangshan earthquake of 1976, this industrial city was almost completely destroyed in the worst earthquake disaster in modern history. | |
| 1979 | Tumaco, Colombia | 7.7 | IX | 600 | The earthquake struck near the border between Colombia and Ecuador on the Pacific coast, producing 10-foot (3-metre) tsunami waves. | |
| 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, California, U.S. | 7.1 | IX | 62 | The San Francisco–Oakland earthquake of 1989, the first sizable movement of the San Andreas Fault since 1906, collapsed a section of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge. | |
| 1994 | Northridge, California, U.S. | 6.8 | IX | 60 | Centred in the urbanized San Fernando Valley, the Northridge earthquake of 1994 collapsed freeways and some buildings, but damage was limited by earthquake-resistant construction. | |
| 1995 | 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 İzmit earthquake of 1999 heavily damaged the industrial city of İzmit and the naval base at Gölcük. | |
| 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 state, India | 8.0 | X | 20,000 | The Bhuj earthquake of 2001, 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 | 9.1 | 200,000 | The deaths resulting from this offshore quake actually were caused by a tsunami originating in the Indian Ocean 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 | The Kashmir earthquake of 2005, perhaps the deadliest shock ever to strike South Asia, left hundreds of thousands of people exposed to the coming winter weather. | |
| 2006 | Yogyakarta, Indonesia | 6.3 | IX | 5,700 | The Yogyakarta earthquake injured nearly 40,000 people and destroyed or damaged nearly 600,000 homes in the Bantul-Yogyakarta area. | |
| 2008 | Sichuan province, China | 7.9 | IX | 69,000 | The Sichuan earthquake of 2008 left over five 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. | |
| 2009 | L’Aquila, Italy | 6.3 | VIII | 300 | The L’Aquila earthquake of 2009 left more than 60,000 people homeless and damaged many of the city’s medieval buildings. | |
| 2010 | Port-au-Prince, Haiti | 7.0 | IX | 316,000 | The Haiti earthquake of 2010 devastated the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince and left an estimated 1.5 million survivors homeless. | |
| 2010 | Maule, Chile | 8.8 | VIII | 521 | The Chile earthquake of 2010 produced widespread damage in Chile’s central region and triggered tsunami warnings throughout the Pacific basin. | |
| 2010–11 | Christchurch, New Zealand | 7.0 | VIII | 180 | Most of the devastation associated with the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010–11 resulted from a magnitude-6.3 aftershock that struck on February 22, 2011. | |
| 2011 | Honshu, Japan | 9.0 | VIII | 20,000 | The powerful Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011, which sent tsunami waves across the Pacific basin, caused widespread damage throughout eastern Honshu. | |
| 2011 | Erciş and Van, Turkey | 7.2 | IX | 600 | The Erciş-Van earthquake of 2011 destroyed several apartment complexes and shattered mud-brick homes throughout the region. | |
| 2015 | Kathmandu, Nepal | 7.8 | IX | 9,000 | The Nepal earthquake of 2015 was accompanied by two aftershocks of magnitude 6.6 and 6.7 within the first hour after the quake. A magnitude-7.3 aftershock struck the region on May 12, killing more than 100 people. | |
| 2016 | Muisne, Ecuador | 7.8 | VIII | 500 | The Ecuador earthquake injured more than 4,600 people and flattened thousands of structures in towns and villages along the Pacific coast and inland. | |
Comments are closed.