The largest earthquake recorded in history, 9.5 on Richter scale, happened in 1960 in what country?

xfacilitatorx

Here is a list of quakes. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001439.html First Place Honors 9.5 The honor of greatest earthquake of all time goes to the 1960 Chile earthquake because scientists were able to catch this one on tape. In other words, there have been a lot of really big earthquakes throughout human history (and even greater ones before we came on the scene), but this one they were able to measure, record and verify its ground motion strength. The instruments that seismologists use to measure earthquake magnitudes are designed to detect the amount of energy released by the movement of the ground during a quake. In the case of the Chile earthquake, the amount of energy released during the quake, not the number of human deaths and damage to structures, earned it the title of greatest. http://www.extremescience.com/GreatestEarthquake.htm Mar 09 06, 8:13 AM