In the early morning of December 28, 1908 a 30 to 42 seconds long earthquake with a reconstructed magnitude of 6.7-7.2 hit the Italian cities of Messina and Reggio Calabria. The earthquake damaged 90% of the buildings and broken pipes fuelled a firestorm, an aftereffect known from many other earthquakes; however one of the most [...]

The tsunami of Indonesia 2004 and Japan 2011 showed that they are a common element associated with earthquakes. Modern databases list more than 2.000 tsunami events worldwide in the last 4.000 years, most of them recorded in historic documents, chronicles and even myths – and yet tsunami deposits in the geological record seem to be [...]

“It is not good that these stories are forgotten. Friends, you are telling them from mouth to ear, and when your old men die they will be forgotten. It is good that you should have a box in which your laws and your stories are kept. My friend, George Hunt, will show you a box [...]

In just one day and one night – August 24 to 25 – in 79 A.D. a sequence of deadly pyroclastic currents coming from Mount Vesuvius destroyed and buried the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. But this volcano, periodically active and despite his modest size considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes of the world, [...]

October 1792 the crew of the “H.M.S. Discovery“, surveying the western coasts of the American continent, spotted a mountain and named it after the British diplomat Alleyne FitzHerbert, 1st Baron St. Helens (1753-1839). The true origin of Mount St. Helens was revealed to the naturalists only in 1835, when a minor eruption revealed its volcanic [...]

“O, promised land O, wicked ground Build a dream Tear it down O, promised land What a wicked ground Build a dream Watch it all fall down” “San Andreas Fault” Maybe the first persons to note something unusual in early morning of April 18, 1906 were the sailors of the ship “Wellington“, just entering the [...]

In the early morning of April 6, 2009 a 20 seconds lasting earthquake with magnitude 6,9 (followed later by weaker aftershocks) occurred near the city of L´Aquila (Abruzzo, Italy). More than 45 towns were affected, 308 people killed, 1.600 injured and more then 65.000 inhabitants were forced to leave their homes. Italy has a long [...]

“One day earthquake and thunder decided to explore the world, but doing so they reached only a desolate and dry plateau. Earthquake noted that the land was located much too high in the sky for humans “They will have no food, if there is no place for the creatures of the sea to live in!” [...]

Japan is situated in the collision zone of at least four lithospheric plates: the Eurasian/Chinese Plate, the North American Plate, the Philippine Plate and the Pacific Plate. The continuous movements of these plates generate a lot of energy released from time to time in earthquakes and tsunamis of varying magnitude and effects (Geologist Callan Bentley [...]

On July 25, 1946 the United States detonated the first underwater nuclear weapon in history – code name “Baker” – at the Bikini Atoll. The explosion generated a gas bubble that pushed against the water, generating a supersonic shock wave which crushed the hulls of nearby target ships as it spread out. Seismic waves of [...]