A TWIN OF THE GREAT LISBON EARTHQUAKE (BASED ON THE MATERIALS OF THE NEWSPAPER “ST. PETERSBURG VEDOMOSTI” FOR THE 18TH C.)


L.I. Ioganson


Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia


E-mail: iogan@ifz.ru


Abstract. The article deals with materials on the earthquake of March 31, 1761, almost unknown in our scientific discourse, however very significant in its seismological effects, so that can be considered as a "twin" of the Great Lisbon catastrophe on November 1, 1755. The earthquake of March 31, 1761 was occurred within a large part of Europe and, although it had not such catastrophic consequences as Lisbon, it caused the change of the seismic regime observed after the Lisbon earthquake. With both earthquakes were connected tsunamis on the western margins of Europe and the east coast of North America, as well as seismic activation of vast, but territorially different spaces in Western Europe and Northern Africa. It is possible to associate a number of the strongest seismic events in the Western Atlantic with the event of March 31, 1761 as well. In the recent scientific literature, predominantly in Portugal, the sources of both shocks are located in the eastern part of the Azoro-Gibraltar fault zone. It is important to stress, that initial data for the article were derived from newspaper “Sankt-Petersburg Vedomosti” for the 18th century which were associated with information from historical catalogs and recent foreign papers.


Keywords: Lisbon earthquake, earthquake of March 31, 1761, seismic activation, tsunami, historical sources, newspaper “St. Petersburg Vedomosti”


About the author


IOGANSON Lidia Ivanovna Schmidt Institute of Physics of the Earth, Russian Academy of Sciences. Russia, 123242, Moscow, Bolshaya Gruzinskaya st., 10-1. E-mail: iogan@ifz.ru


Cite this article as: Ioganson L.I. A twin of the Great Lisbon earthquake (based on the materials of the newspaper “St. Petersburg Vedomosti” for the 18th c.), Voprosy Inzhenernoi Seismologii (Problems of Engineering Seismology), 2020, Vol. 47, No. 3, pp. 139–146 [in Russian]. https://doi.org/10.21455/VIS2020.3-8


English translation of the article will be published in Seismic Instruments, ISSN: 0747-9239 (Print) 1934-7871 (Online), https://link.springer.com/journal/11990



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