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An earthquake registering 8.5 Mw and subsequent tsunami struck Japan, killing at least 22,000 people and destroying about 9,000 homes.
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1896 Sanriku earthquake
Japanese tsunami earthquake
The 1896 Sanriku earthquake was one of the most destructive seismic events in Japanese history. The 8.5 magnitude earthquake occurred at 19:32 on June 15, 1896, approximately 166 kilometres (103 mi) off the coast of Iwate Prefecture, Honshu. It resulted in two tsunami waves…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
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)
Tsunami
Series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water
A tsunami is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and underwater explosions above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami. Unlike normal…Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)