1755 Lisbon earthquake a benevolent deity. The Lisbon disaster provided a counterexample. As Theodor Adorno wrote, "[t]he earthquake of Lisbon sufficed to cure Voltaire of the theodicy of Leibniz" ("Negative Dialectics" 361). In the later twentieth century, the 1755 earthquake has sometimes been compared to the Holocaust as a catastrophe that transformed European culture and philosophy. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was also influenced by the devastation following the earthquake, whose severity he believed was due to too many people living within the close quarters of the city. Rousseau used the earthquake as an argument against cities as part of his desire for a more naturalistic
1787 New Spain earthquake height has been estimated as 18.5 m, based on records of inundation and current elevations. The earthquake caused damage to buildings in Mexico City and many buildings in Oaxaca City were destroyed. Three churches in Teuchitlan were destroyed. The rupture behaviour of the subduction interface in the area of the 1787 earthquake involves occasional very large earthquakes, such as that in 1787, with smaller (M7) earthquakes rupturing just part of the plate boundary during the intervening period. Similar behaviour has been observed along the Colombia-Ecuador subduction zone, with three M7 earthquakes since the M8.8 1906 Ecuador–Colombia earthquake rupturing just part