A 4.3 tremor struck the town of Folkestone in Kent UK yesterday. Only one injury was reported. Apparently, this is not as unusual an occurrence as I had thought at first. The BBC reports:
"This is by no means a complete surprise," [British Geological Survey (BGS) seismologist Roger Musson] said. "There have been earthquakes in this location before.
"Two of them have been some of the biggest earthquakes ever to affect Britain.
"The first was in 1382 and in 1580 a quake with a magnitude of about six killed two people in London.
"There were also smaller tremors in 1776 and 1950 in the area, which were in the "low fours" and on a similar scale to the one today."
I'm going to look into contemporary accounts of the 1382, 1580, and 1776 quakes to see what the people of the time thought of them.
Comments