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Unusual Historic Crises and Calamities

Khalid Elhassan April 16, 2020 34 min

19. A Religious Festival Interrupted by Calamity

Aftermath of the Lisbon Earthquake. Encyclopedia Britannica

Lisbon was celebrating All Saints Day on the morning of November 1^st, 1755, when the festivities were cut short, just as they began, by a natural disaster. At the time, the Portuguese capitol was one of Europe’s wealthiest cities and busiest seaports. It was almost totally demolished by a powerful earthquake, with a magnitude of about a 9.0 on the Richter Scale. The shocks were felt as far away as Finland, North Africa, and the Caribbean.

Striking around 9:40 AM, the Lisbon Earthquake caused fissures nearly 20 feet deep to open in the city’s streets. Because of the religious festival, a significant percentage of the population were gathered in churches and cathedrals when the tremors began. Thousands were crushed to death as the houses of worship collapsed atop them. As the tremors subsided, another danger arose when fires erupted around the city, first individually, then joining together until most of Lisbon was a giant inferno.

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.