Phenomena
1755 Lisbon Earthquake
Earthquake
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On the morning of All Saints' Day 1755, an earthquake, the fires it started and the tsunami that followed destroyed most of Lisbon. The Marquis of Pombal's systematic parish-by-parish survey of what happened made it the first earthquake studied scientifically across a whole region, and it is regarded as the founding event of modern seismology and earthquake engineering. Its philosophical shock ran just as deep, provoking Voltaire and Rousseau to argue over what the disaster meant.
Facts
Disputed
Magnitude or ScaleModern estimates place the moment magnitude between 7.7 and 9.0 1 No instruments existed in 1755; the magnitude is reconstructed from shaking accounts, damage and tsunami records, and estimates genuinely differ across this range. Death TollRoughly 30,000 to 40,000 dead in Lisbon; totals across Portugal, Spain and Morocco estimated at 40,000 to 50,000 1 Contemporary records are incomplete and scholarly totals differ by region counted; a further 10,000 may have died in Morocco. LocationEpicenter in the Atlantic Ocean, about 200 kilometers west-southwest of Cape St. Vincent, Portugal 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
In Discipline
Regarded as the founding event of scientific seismology; the first earthquake studied systematically across a whole region.
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