At first many thought it was their furnace malfunctioning or a large truck passing by, but within a few minutes it became clear that it had been an earthquake. Yes, it's true.
Earthquakes do occur on a regular basis in New England.
Nonetheless, the record of earthquake activity in the United States shows that, while the highest level of activity is, of course, in the western part of the country, earthquake activity is quite common in many areas of the eastern United States, including New England. In the late 1960's, a revolution occurred in the geosciences when scientists discovered that earthquakes, volcanoes and geological activity are concentrated in well-defined zones that outline the edges of plates. There are about a dozen such plates. This theory of the Earth, called plate tectonics , is now accepted as the overall explanation of how the Earth works. Plate interiors are much more stable than plate boundaries, and the theory of plate tectonics accounts for most of the large earthquakes in California, Japan, and Alaska, to name a few of the infamous seismic zones.