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The largest earthquake on record happened in Chile on May 22, 1960. It was a magnitute of 9.5 on the Richter scale. The Richter Scale was developed in 1935.
well think about the earthquake in haiti it was really bad and also if it's a 8.9 out of 10 that's REALLY REALLY strong...so um yeah it was like a huge wall of water coming over the cities and messing up with the electrical stuff and blowing up up the power plant and causing major explosions
Not all earthquakes that ever happened have been recorded. We've only recorded them for a little over a century, I believe. So you can't tell for certain. But the biggest earthquake on record is the Valdivia earthquake, from 1960. It measured 9.5 on the Richter scale. (a scale ranging from 1-10)The highest magnitude earthquake occurred in Chile in 1960 with a scale of 9.5.
the sumatra earthquake was the onget earthquake in history, it lasted about 10 minutes and killed over 300,000 people
This is actually a two part answer:1. The largest earthquake in continental US history. A: March 27 1964, Prince William Sound Alaska. 9.22. The largest earthquake in the Contiguous US history.A: New Madrid. 1811 - 1812, 7.9Facts: A series of earthquakes hit the New Madrid seismic zone of southeastern Missouri, northeastern Arkansas, and adjacent parts of Tennessee and Kentucky, in December 1811 to February 1812. Three earthquakes had a magnitude of 7.0 or greater. The first earthquake 7.7 occurred December 16, 1811, at 2:15 a.m.; the second 7.7 at 9 a.m. on January 23, 1812; and the third 7.9 -8.0 on February 7, 1812, at 3:45 a.m. These three earthquakes were among the largest to strike North America since European settlement.The main shocks were followed by many hundreds of aftershocks that lasted for decades. Many of the aftershocks were major earthquakes themselves. The area that was strongly shaken by the three main shocks was 2--3 times as large as the strongly shaken area of the 1964 M9.2 Alaskan earthquake, and 10 times as large as that of the 1906 M7.8 San Francisco earthquake.
According to the USGS National Earthquake Information Center there are over a million earthquakes each year around the world -- that's on average 3,561 per day or 2.5 per minute. Only a portion of these are recorded (~20 - 30K per year) because most occur over remote areas or in the ocean.The most recent large-scale earthquake is the magnitude 9.0 quake on March 11, 2011 that occurred off the coast of Japan. The earthquake in Haiti happened on January 2010 and Chile on February 2010.For a list of the most recent earthquakes in US or around the world (by country or year) check out the lists (with maps) at the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program.