Earthquakes near Kŭlob through history

The deadliest was not the strongest: a magnitude 7.4 on October 21, 1907 (45 km SE of Panjakent, Tajikistan), for which NOAA records 12,000 deaths. NOAA’s list of significant earthquakes has 21 here, back to 1896. NOAA records deaths in 9 of the events here, 23,118 in all. The latest on NOAA’s list is a magnitude 7.5 on October 26, 2015 (Hindu Kush region, Afghanistan). NOAA’s record here begins on September 23, 1896 with an earthquake. 6 of the 21 significant earthquakes NOAA lists here came before 1927.

• October 26, 2015Earthquake · M 7.5Hindu Kush region, Afghanistan · 399 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI · Wikipedia
• November 15, 1921Earthquake · M 7.871 km SSW of Jurm, AfghanistanUSGS · NOAA NCEI
• July 7, 1909Earthquake · M 7.752 km ESE of Farkhār, AfghanistanUSGS · NOAA NCEI
• October 21, 1907Earthquake · M 7.445 km SE of Panjakent, Tajikistan · 12,000 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI
• September 23, 1896Earthquake · M 7.5 (est.)NOAA NCEI

• An event counts for Kŭlob when it began within 100 km of its centre, or 200 km for an earthquake of magnitude 7 or more. Damage can reach further.
• USGS counts here start at magnitude 6: the catalogue’s smaller quakes thin out going back, where few instruments listened.
• NOAA lists significant events only: earthquakes that killed, did about $1 million of damage, reached magnitude 7.5 or intensity X, or raised a tsunami, and eruptions and tsunamis by like measures. Magnitudes before 1900 are its estimates from written accounts.
• Deaths are NOAA’s total for each event, wherever people died, its tsunami and fires included. A tsunami counts the dead its runup records give for this place: NOAA’s total for a tsunami includes its source quake’s.
• A tsunami from elsewhere counts where one of its runups killed or rose a metre or more.
• Counted to October 19, 2026, as is the map. The last 30 days ask USGS again.

How the layers work, where their data comes from and what they can’t tell you: Earthquakes, live, The world through history