A remote Aleutian giant. Because it struck an empty stretch of the North Pacific, one of the century's largest quakes did almost no harm — geography, not luck.
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DownloadThe 1965 Rat Islands earthquake struck on February 4, 1965, registering magnitude 8.7 (moment magnitude, Mw). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 11,220× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 51.25°N, 178.72°E, at a depth of about 30 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.