Science: Startled Old Lady

One calm evening in Washington last week a tiny mirror twitched in a tiny spasm. So at the moment did similar mirrors in London, Bombay, Frankfurt am Main, Ottawa, Pasadena, Victoria, New York City. Each twitching mirror reflected a beam of light on a revolving drum covered with photosensitive paper. When seismologists saw these jagged tracks they knew that a mighty earthquake was somewhere in progress.

“Worst earthquake shocks in 35 years of recording,” reported Victoria.

“The whole world is shaking!” cried London.

Fordham University said the shock-record on its apparatus was a foot long.

Because distance is easier to determine than direction, first guesses had the quake almost everywhere—in Mexico, in Siberia, in the Black Sea, in the mid-Pacific. Finally, when the earthquake men were able to co-ordinate distances reported by several stations, their eyes popped. The circles they drew all intersected in Baffin Bay, between Greenland and northeast Canada. Never before had a major quake occurred within the Arctic Circle west of Greenland. If the epicentre had been in a populous area, observed the seismologists, the loss of life & property would have been tremendous.

Next day, like a startled old lady, Mother Earth kept on trembling. There were aftershocks in Baffin Bay. In Panama, 17 shocks disrupted communications, shook clown a few ramshackle houses, scared natives. The third day, the Lindberghs, asleep in the Azores, were roused at 3 a. m. by more shocks. The fourth day there were temblors in Portland, Ore., in Italy’s Abruzzi region on the Adriatic Sea. At last on the fifth day old Mother Earth seemed to have calmed down.