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Historic Disasters That Were Way Worse Than People Think

Khalid Elhassan April 6, 2020 33 min

Yellow River - 1887 Yellow River flood — 1887 Yellow River Flood. Hakai Magazine

18. The Classical World’s Most Fatal Earthquake

The 365 AD Cretan Earthquake and Tsunami. Nature

The Roman world was rocked by a powerful earthquake early in the morning of July 21^st, 365 AD, that killed up to half a million people. Epicenter on Crete, the earthquake registered at least 8 on the Richter Scale. It shook the island and brought about widespread devastation, and was the most powerful seismic upheaval that struck the region in recorded history. In one gigantic push from below, coral reefs surrounding Crete erupted 33 feet upwards, clear of the water. Geologists estimate that the island as a whole was lifted by as much as 30 feet.

The tremors caused a powerful tsunami that wrecked much of the Cretan coast, and raced across the Mediterranean, wreaking havoc around its shores. The tsunami struck Greece to the north, Cyprus to the east, reached south to devastate coastal communities along the North African coast in Alexandria, Egypt’s Nile Delta and Libya and raced westward to cause damage in Sicily and in far off Spain. The wall of water was high enough and powerful enough that it carried ships and hurled them up to two miles inland.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.