This Day in History, 1985: Earthquake Rocks New York

On October 19, 1985, exactly twenty-one years ago today, a small earthquake shook the New York City area.

I remember it well. It was the morning of the PSATs, and when the earthquake happened I was in the shower. I had never experienced an earthquake before, so I had no reference yet with which to compare my experience. I had always thought of an earthquake as a shaking of the ground, but that's not what this one was like. It felt as if the world tilted for a moment with a rumble, and then readjusted itself.

Needless to say, the earthquake was the talk of all the eleventh grade when we arrived at the school later that morning to take the PSATs.

By the way, today is also the nineteenth anniversary of Black Monday, the day in 1987 when the Dow-Jones fell 508 points.


Ask kradical about this earthquake. :)

Seriously. :)
OK, now I'm curious. Can you point him here so I can get the story?
See, *i* remember Black Monday, or tha aftermath anyway- the brokerage firm my dad worked for went out of business.

What I remember about Black Monday is the next morning, as I sat in a freshman Physics lecture while students passed a newspaper around with a cover story about the Dow. Our minds definitely were not focused on work that day.
That was the Ardsley quake. I was in college in New Rochelle, not far from the epicenter. My dorm was an old building, built like a fortress. I slept right through it. When I got up, though, everyone was talking about it. I also slept right through Hurricane Gloria, and missed that completely, too.
You're certainly Mr. Excitement. :-)
My excitement in high school and college was strictly man-made and self-inflicted. Mother Nature couldn't compete.
I actually slept through that earthquake. To this day, whenever I'm being particularly oblivious, my father will look at me and throw back the words I said the morning of the 19th: "What earthquake?"
Aha! So that's what terri_osborne meant.

You'll notice that delkytlar also slept through it.
i sortof slept through it. it woke me up partway, then i went back to sleep and got up an hour later. my parents told me "you slept through an earthquake!" and i replied, "i did NOT sleep earthquake? that's what that was?" i remember rolling (er, being rolled?) back and forth in my bed but never quite rolled OUT, and a sound like a train was about to come through my third-floor window, "back to the future iii" style but i somehow noticed the doppler effect was missing.

i keep forgetting i'm a year "older" than you. i was a senior, so no PSATs for me. LIRR service was cancelled the whole weekend for track inspection, otherwise i'd have been at the Columbia thing of ours. we didn't meet till the following spring, tho, so i wouldn't have noticed your absence. ;)
We didn't meet until Spring 1986? That sounds right, but that means that we would have only gotten to know each other in one class. That doesn't sound right.

Did we meet in the Lloyd Motz class?
yep. that was it, just the one class. dr. "i wrote a book with fermi, yes i'm that old" motz. dry as he was, i liked him. all the equations for a star. i kept waltzing in 5min late, because LIRR schedules meant i'd either be 5min late or 55min early. and even then i went towards whatever option let me sleep later. ;)

i was only in it the one year. my fall class was quantum particles: quarks flavors etc. i forget the professor's name, but i do remember him rushing in all excited about whatever related thing they'd just done out at BNL during the week since our previous class. he was not dry.
Was that fall class the particle physics class? I think I took that one in my second year of the program.

Wow, the equations for the star. Somewhere I may still have all my notes for that. I do know I have an autographed copy of one of Motz's books, and a copy of his textbook somewhere in my Mom's basement.
yes, that was it! (were there any classes offered that weren't from the physics department?) i have my notes from both of my classes in one 8x11 spiral. i believe i still have it somewhere, packrat that i am, but not sure where.
There were nonphysics classes, sure. I recall there being computer science and biology classes, for example.

But physics was my main interest, so those were the ones I took.

July 2014

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