Earthquakes in history

• Earthquakes alone, as yellow marks sized by magnitude; History’s panel can add the tsunamis and eruptions around them.
• Click a quake for its magnitude, depth, intensity, deaths and damage where the source gives them, and EPICA’s uncertainty in the epicentre.
• Opened from this page, the map plays 1900 to today.

• NOAA NCEIThe Significant Earthquake Database: quakes that killed, did about $1 million of damage, reached magnitude 7.5 or intensity X, or raised a tsunami.
• EPICAThe European PreInstrumental Earthquake Catalogue, version 1.1 (Rovida and Antonucci 2021, INGV): Europe’s earthquakes from 1000 to 1899 with an estimated magnitude.
• USGSThe quakes TAKIP has recorded from the USGS feed since it began recording in 2026.

NOAA adds quakes as it reviews them; EPICA is a published catalogue; the USGS record grows as TAKIP runs.

• Where two catalogues hold the same quake (about 390 of EPICA’s are also NOAA’s), it is one event.
• Europe before 1900 is far fuller than anywhere else, through EPICA: Italy alone holds about one quake in eight.
• Magnitudes before instruments are estimated from the damage reported; about one quake in seven has none at all.
• More than half are placed only at an area: an old epicentre is uncertain, often by tens of kilometres.