Lisbon earthquake
On the morning of All Saints’ Day a powerful earthquake, followed by a tsunami and fires, destroyed most of Lisbon and killed tens of thousands; the catastrophe shook the optimism of Enlightenment Europe and became the first earthquake to be studied systematically.
- Date
- 1 November 1755exact date
- Place
- Lisbontoday: Lisbon, Portugal · Western and Central Europe
- Participants
- Kingdom of Portugal, Marquis of Pombal
- Threads
- History of Portugal since the Battle of Aljubarrota
- Also known as
- Great Lisbon earthquake; Terramoto de 1755; Великое Лиссабонское землетрясение
The shock struck at about 9:40 on 1 November 1755, All Saints’ Day, and lasted several minutes; seismologists estimate its magnitude at 7.7 or more, with the epicentre in the Atlantic about 200 km west-southwest of Cape St Vincent. About 40 minutes later a tsunami swept over the harbour and the lower town, and candles lit for the feast started fires that raged for hours. Of some 200,000 inhabitants, 30,000–40,000 are estimated to have died (estimates vary widely), and about 85% of the city’s buildings were destroyed, among them the Ribeira Palace with its royal library of 70,000 volumes and the new opera house. The waves also struck the Algarve, Morocco, Spain and even the Caribbean.
The minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, the future Marquis of Pombal, took charge of relief and rebuilding. The lower town, the Baixa, was rebuilt with new streets and some of the first earthquake-resistant buildings in Europe, and a questionnaire sent to every parish made Pombal a forerunner of modern seismology. Voltaire answered the disaster with his “Poem on the Lisbon Disaster” and later with Candide, an attack on philosophical optimism.
Connections
Same participants
- Gold rush in Minas Geraisbetween 1692 and 1698 · Latin Americavia Kingdom of Portugal
- Transfer of the Portuguese court to Brazil29 November 1807 – 8 March 1808 · Latin Americavia Kingdom of Portugal
Same place
- Expulsion and forced conversion of the Jews of Portugal5 December 1496 – October 1497 · Western and Central Europe
- Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India8 July 1497 – between August and September 1499 · Western and Central Europe
- Publication of The Lusiads1572 · Western and Central Europe
- Restoration of Portuguese independence1 December 1640 · Western and Central Europe
- British Ultimatum of 189011 January 1890 · Western and Central Europe
- 5 October 1910 revolution — Portugal becomes a republic5 October 1910 · Western and Central Europe
- Salazar’s Estado Novo: the Constitution of 193319 March 1933 · Western and Central Europe
- Carnation Revolution25 April 1974 · Western and Central Europe
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): 1755 Lisbon earthquake
- Wikipedia (Russian): Лиссабонское землетрясение
- Maxwell K. Pombal: Paradox of the Enlightenment. — Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
- Molesky M. This Gulf of Fire: The Destruction of Lisbon, or Apocalypse in the Age of Science and Reason. — New York: Knopf, 2015.
- Wikidata: Q191055