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
1989 Newcastle earthquake area. The number of people in the city on the day of the earthquake was lower than usual, due to a strike by local bus drivers. The earthquake struck in the middle of an interview by local television station NBN with a union representative. In early 2007 a United States academic claimed that coal mining in the region triggered the earthquake, although earthquake activity has been present in the area at least since European settlement first occurred. This is in addition to reports by the former head of Geoscience Australia's earthquake monitoring group, Dr David Denholm, who stated that the