Earthquakes

Newspaper articles about earthquakes tell stories of devastation from all over the world. Earthquakes are some of the most destructive and life threatening natural disasters, from which no country in the world is safe. There are hundreds of earthquakes recorded all across the world every year. The past two years have been filled with hurricanes, earthquakes (and the tsunamis they have caused) which are responsible for over 200,000 deaths alone.

Although no region of the globe is safe from an earthquake, there are certain areas that are more prone to major earthquakes than others. The most devastating earthquakes have historically occurred in Asia and along the Pacific rim, such as the 1976 earthquake in China that killed more than 240,000 people. However, the most devastating aspect of earthquakes is their ability to spawn other natural disasters. Earthquakes are often the cause of tsunamis, which can be every bit as destructive as the earthquake itself. This was the case in late 2004, when an underwater earthquake that registered 9.0 on the Richter scale caused a tsunami that killed nearly 160,000 people in Sumatra, Indonesia.

NewspaperARCHIVE.com, the largest database of historic newspapers online, is providing a free archive on the history of earthquakes. The archive includes stories of earthquakes dating as far back as 1759 and as recent as the Kashmiri earthquake of 2005. The archive also contains articles about the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the devastating earthquake at Tangshan, China, in 1976 and other major earthquakes throughout history. Click on the timeline above to view newspapers in chronological order or begin searching the newspaper pages with your own key words.