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What is the strongest earthquake in a city?

On November 1, 1755, what is thought to be the strongest earthquake to strike an urban area occurred in Lisbon, Portugal. Although no one knows for certain, the quake may have registered 9.0 on the Richter scale. (Used to measure the magnitude of an earthquake, the Richter scale has graded steps beginning with one and ending with ten; each step is about 60 times greater than the preceding step.) More than 60,000 people died and Lisbon was destroyed. People felt tremors as far away as Sweden, and the quake caused a tidal wave in the Atlantic Ocean, hitting the West Indies (a group of islands between North America and South America).

Further Information: Dixon, Dougal. Natural Disasters. New York: Reader's Digest Books, 1997, pp. 34–51; Earthquakes. [Online] Available

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