One of the first great Himalayan earthquakes of the instrumental age. It flattened hill towns across northern India and hinted at the enormous strain still locked beneath the mountains.
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DownloadThe 1905 Kangra earthquake struck on April 4, 1905, registering magnitude 7.9 (moment magnitude, Mw). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 708× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 32.60°N, 76.92°E, at a depth of about 20 km — a shallow crustal earthquake. Shallow earthquakes like this release their energy close to the surface, which is why the shaking near the epicenter was so violent.
An estimated 19,000 people were killed.