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A 5.8 MW earthquake struck the Piedmont region of Virginia, and was felt by more people than any other quake in U.S. history.

Moment magnitude scale

Measure of earthquake size, in terms of the energy released

The moment magnitude scale is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude based on its seismic moment. Mw was defined in a 1979 paper by Thomas C. Hanks and Hiroo Kanamori. Similar to the local magnitude/Richter scale (ML ) defined by Charles Francis Richter in 1935, it uses a…
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)

2011 Virginia earthquake

Earthquake in Virginia, U.S.

On August 23, 2011, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake hit the Piedmont region of the U.S. state of Virginia at 1:51:04 p.m. EDT. The epicenter, in Louisa County, was 38 mi (61 km) northwest of Richmond and 5 mi (8 km) south-southwest of the town of Mineral. It was an intraplate…
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)

Piedmont (United States)

Plateau region located in the eastern United States

The Piedmont is a plateau region located in the Eastern United States. It is situated between the Atlantic Plain and the Blue Ridge Mountains, stretching from New York in the north to central Alabama in the south. The Piedmont Province is a physiographic province of the larger…
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)

Virginia

U.S. state

Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The state's capital is Richmond and its most populous city is Virginia Beach. Its most…
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)