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
1889 Kumamoto earthquake 1889 Kumamoto earthquake The 1889 Kumamoto earthquake occurred at 11.40 p.m local time on July 28 in the western part of Kumamoto. It was also called the Kinpozan earthquake (or Kinbozan earthquake, since its epicenter was the southern-eastern foot of Mount Kinpu) and its magnitude was 6.3. Twenty people died (5 in Kumamoto City and 15 in Akita Gun, Kumamoto Prefecture) and hundreds of houses and parts of Kumamoto Castle were destroyed. The earthquake was the first major one after the establishment of the Seismological Society of Japan (in 1880), and its waves were recorded as far as Potsdam, Germany.