The Crowbar Chronicles and Other Tales

The analysis of historical earthquakes often relies heavily on archival accounts describing the effects of shaking on structures and people. Newspaper articles are among the most common, useful, and easily found sources of information. Dramatic earthquake effects are almost certain to have made the news during historic times; the challenge for modern seismologists is not to be overly swayed by articles that focus on the most dramatic rather than the representative effects in a region. At the other end of the spectrum, rarely does a historical newspaper explicitly note that an earthquake was not felt in a certain area: it is not news when nothing happens. When earthquake effects are subtle, the vexing question is often, did they go unreported entirely? Reading historical newspapers, one soon realizes that some early newspapers—those that focused on commercial and/or political subjects—did not seem to consider it within their purview to report on earthquakes at all. Most newspapers, however, clearly found felt earthquakes newsworthy. Even if an earthquake was simply felt in an area, with no other effects, one-sentence articles commonly appeared in local papers: “The shock of an earthquake was felt in this place yesterday around 6 o’clock in the morning.” These mini-articles were often reprinted in other newspapers. In early America, at least, earthquakes were clearly uncommon enough to be noteworthy. Still, where shaking in a certain location was at the ragged edge of perceptibility, i.e., only felt by a few people in an area, one suspects the observations sometimes went unreported. > Capt. Buckingham, on the subject of that earthquake at Washington... has ‘given in.’ He believes there was a real earthquake, and the crow bar had nothing to do with it. On the …