Dusted Files

On May 22, 1960, the largest earthquake ever recorded struck Chile. The tsunami it sent across the Pacific killed 61 people in Hawaii and 142 in Japan, a day later and 10,000 miles away. Then a landslide nearly flooded the ruins of Valdivia a second time.

On January 12, 1888, children left for school across the Dakota Territory in mild weather. By afternoon, the temperature had dropped 40 degrees in thirty minutes. 235 people died — many frozen within sight of shelter they never found. No warning had been issued.

In September 1859, a solar storm gave telegraph operators electric shocks from disconnected equipment. Some kept working — powered by the aurora alone. The same storm today would collapse the global power grid. In 2012, one of equal strength missed Earth by nine days.