List of tsunamis
Very small tsunamis, non-destructive and undetectable without specialized equipment, occur frequently as a result of minor earthquakes and other events.
[2] As early as 426 BC, the Greek historian Thucydides inquired in his book History of the Peloponnesian War (3.89.1–6) about the causes of tsunamis.
[93] Historical records of early navigators such as Vasco da Gama were lost, and among the destroyed buildings were most of Portugal's examples of Manueline architecture.
Eighteenth-century Europeans struggled to understand the disaster within religious and rational belief systems, and Enlightenment philosophers, notably Voltaire, wrote about the event.
The philosophical concept of the sublime, as described by Immanuel Kant was inspired by attempts to understand the enormity of the Lisbon earthquake and tsunami.
[94] An underwater earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.4 occurred near the Yaeyama Islands in the former Ryūkyū Kingdom (present day Okinawa, Japan) on 24 April 1771 at about 08:00.
On 9 October 1963 a landslide of some 260,000,000 cubic metres (340,000,000 cu yd) of forest, dirt, and rock fell into the reservoir at speeds of up to 110 km/h (68 mph).
The initial surge was measured at a height of approximately 33 meters (108 ft), making it one of the largest earthquake-generated tsunamis in recorded history.
The tsunami killed people from the immediate vicinity of the earthquake in Indonesia, Thailand, and the northwest coast of Malaysia, to thousands of miles away in Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and as far afield as Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center recorded a 76 mm (3.0 in) rise in sea level near the epicenter, and New Zealand scientists noted waves up to 14 m (46 ft) off the coast of Samoa.
Large waves without major damage were reported in Fiji, the north coast of New Zealand and Rarotonga in the Cook Islands.
[209][210] The deadliest tsunami in recorded history was the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed almost 230,000 people in fourteen countries including (listed in order of confirmed fatalities) Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, Somalia, Myanmar, Maldives, Malaysia, Tanzania, Seychelles, Bangladesh, South Africa, Yemen and Kenya.
