Talk:1755 Lisbon earthquake

message: Masterful job Muriel! The combination of the historical and geological angles is truly superb. Wikipedia is lucky to have you here! -- Viajero 09:42, 3 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Brava Muriel! 

message: Hi, According to the American Heritage Dictionary (4th ed), tidal wave also means tsunami. Why use a fancy Japanese word when we have a plain English one? -- Viajero 21:00, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Because the "fancy Japanese word" is more precise and more accurate - although it doesn't really matter all that much, since tidal wave redirects to tsunami (see either link for details). -- Jredmond 21:12, 29 Oct 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Excuse me, but who are you to say what is more precise and more accurate? We are not talking about mathematics here, this is human language, something that changes and evolves continuously. My (corpus-based) dictionary says they mean the same thing. That's fine. We'll use Tsunami instead, since you like it better. I just didn't care for your snide Summary comment. -- Viajero 11:57, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: I apologize for my tone, but the article for tsunami does mention that the term "tidal wave" is often incorrectly applied to tsunamis.  Good point about the lack of precision in language; if nothing else, the use of "tsunami" is more consistent with other articles.  Again, sorry about the tone.  -- Jredmond 14:52, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: And i think that tsunami is more international: Tidal wave in portuguese, for instance, is tsunami! Muriel Gottrop 14:58, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: "Maremoto" is a generic word that can mean both a "tidal wave" and a "tsunami". 201.29.151.207 19:13, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

text:  To both Muriel and the above unsigned user : "Maremoto" is the correct portuguese word for "Tsunami", although we use both without preference. "Tidal wave" in portuguese is "Marés vivas" only, as "maremoto" only refers to the seismic effect. Rafael V.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.48.171.28 (talk) 18:51, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Tidal wave

message: The reference to Marquis of Pombal seems ambiguous:
:Priests of the Inquisition roamed the city, rounding up "heretics" and hanging them on the spot for angering God. This gave the Marquis of Pombal, the de facto ruler of Portugal, the excuse to start an all-out struggle against the Jesuits.
Was he surpressing the Jesuits for hanging people? Or did he also use the earthquake as an excuse to surpress the Jesuits. (I assume the latter). Perhaps this could be disambiguated. Viajero 14:11, 2 Nov 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  query: reference to Marquis of Pombal 

message: Tsunamis up to twenty meters in height swept the coast from North Africa to Finland and across the Atlantic to Martinique and Barbados.
Finland? Look on a map; that's unreasonable. It should perhaps be Norway? -FredrikM
:I find it very strange. Every other text I read said Scotland was the farthest place the tsunami struck, not Finlad nor Norway. 77.54.155.226 (talk) 22:53, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Finland?

message: Wasn't there an auto de fé soon after the earthquake? This may be where the hanging priests allegation was referring to. Will have to look this up - many heretics were burnt, rather than hanged, in a typical auto-de-fé, anyhow. I don't know whether an auto-de-fé was called *specifically* to purge the city of the sins that had brought about divine punishment. Hasdrubal 15:41, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry - didn't see this discussion before I reverted the deletion. That paragraph was added by  at 11:54, 14 March 2006.diff and I have taken the text out again.  You are right: we should not present satire as a factual "report" or a "direct and contemporaneous reference", although the last sentence ("it having been decided by the University of Coimbra, that the burning of a few people alive by a slow fire, and with great ceremony, is an infallible preventive of earthquakes") makes it reasonably obvious that Voltaire is not being entirely serious. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:11, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Auto de Fé

message: This article is really superb and if only someone would add some references, it would imho be ready to be a featured article--XmarkX 14:28, 10 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I completely agree. Sandover 17:05, 11 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: References and Feature Nomination

message: I don't know enough to have an opinion on the importance of Kant's natural-philosophy explanations of the Lisbon quake on the evolution of seismology -- though it seems reasonable to call them "forerunners" as very early and semi-scientific/non-supernatural explanations.  If it helps, my source for this claim was Walter Benjamin's children's-radio broadcast text on the quake. -- Rbellin|Talk 03:27, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No one was more fascinated by these remarkable events than the great German philosopher Kant, whose name may be familiar to some of you.  At the time of the earthquake he was a young man of twenty-four, who had never left his hometown of Königsberg -- and who would never do so in the future.  But he eagerly collected all the reports of the earthquake that he could find, and the slim book he wrote about it probably represents the beginnings of scientific geography in Germany.  And certainly the beginnings of seismology.  I would gladly tell you something of the route taken by this science from that description of the earthquake of 1755 down to the present day.  But I must take care... 
I'll leave it up to other editors whether any of this belongs in the article. -- Rbellin|Talk 04:26, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kant and seismology 

message: For those who are trying to track down the controversy mentioned in the Wikipedia Quarto, here are the two parts of the article by Theresa E. Carpinelli on the issue: Part One, Part Two. JesseW 5 July 2005 22:03 (UTC)
:She added a Part Three and Part Four Oct/Nov 2005.  David Bergan 18:06, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The article on the "priests hanging people" controversy 

message: Great article!  One line in the header I would have liked to see more of, though, is the claim that the quake disrupted Portugal's colonial ambitions.  This strikes me as entirely plausible, but I'd like to see a little more explanation of why (disruption of economy?  Loss of fleet?) and what stage these colonial ambitions were at; since it's in the header, it would nice to have a bit of follow-up.  Again, nice work and a very interesting read... --Dvyost 23:57, 16 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colonial ambitions 

message: I was never able to find out how long after the earthquake the tsunami struck, but I know it wasn't "several" minutes (as in five or ten minutes after the quake). Was it 30 minutes? 40 minutes? 50 minutes? I just don't know. But it was a decent interval, and that's the origin of the awkward "tens of minutes" phrase. While I know "several minutes after" reads better, it reinforces the false assumption that the tsunami happened almost immediately after the quake. Sandover 19:25, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tens of minutes 

message: Excellent article, editors, no wonder it's a Featured Article!  I have just passed this article for inclusion in Wikipedia:Version 0.5 as part of the Featured Article review.  
While this article is in very good shape, I do notice a few things that could be done to improve it.
* Use inline citations.  They allow people to easily learn more about a certain fact in the article.  For a book source, mention the page(s) as well.
* Mention more about the impact outside of Lisbon.  If the tsunami was 20 meters high, it obviously caused immense destruction where it hit, so embellish more upon this if sources exist.
* You mention that animals seemed to sense the earthquake was going to happen.  Some context on this phenomenon would be helpful to the unfamiliar reader.
Again, keep up the good work!
-Runningonbrains 22:46, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  A few suggestions...  

message: Good article, but I find one citation of a book therein that seems to not exist.  The Charles B. Brooks book from 1994 titled:  "Disaster at Lisbon, The Great Earthquake of 1755" is not found anywhere in my search except for a short listing at Barnes and Noble web site.  The publisher was Brooks House, which I also do not find.  Sounds like a self published book that only the Library of Congress would have a copy of.  And no, I did not find the book listed at Abebooks.com, either. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Handel8 (talk • contribs).
: The book definitely exists, and it is present in my university's library catalogue.  If you like, I can verify its physical existence tomorrow.  But I see no reason to doubt it. -- Rbellin|Talk 04:34, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have physically confirmed the book's existence.  It has no apparent ISBN, and is obviously from a small press, but to all appearances (on quick perusal, not thorough reading) it is a reasonable book-length narrative history of the quake.  It has a very extensive bibliography, which might make it a particularly useful reference. -- Rbellin|Talk 20:56, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't know what purpose further discussion of this book serves.  Wikipedia is not the place to communicate your advice to the author.  Perhaps interested readers could visit the Library of Congress or the six other institutions which OCLC WorldCat lists as holding a copy. -- Rbellin|Talk 04:00, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Brooks book

message: I'm currently involved in a discusssion at Talk:Basel earthquake over what the article should be called. I argue that based on the literature, and articles like this one, it should be called 1356 Basel earthquake (the original title before it was moved to Basel earthquake). Has there been discussion here on what the name of this featured article should be? Any input over there would be appreciated, as well as any help to expand the article. Thanks. Carcharoth 02:36, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: PS. I've made the redirect Great Lisbon Earthquake, and added this alternative name to the lead section. Carcharoth 02:41, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Naming discussion at [[Talk:Basel earthquake]] 

message: First, the coma and the point are decimal separators. For easy reading, one must use a space not a coma nor a point. See BIPM or ISO.
About the population of Lisbon in 1755: Taking 60 000 in 1422 and 85 000 in 1528 we get about 176 000. In 1755 the population of Lisbon was about 176 000.
The tragedy (earthquake, tsunami and fire) kill about 12 000. (I am searching suitable web references. You shoud do it too. Harvard is a good place to start (they have many original documents about it). It's not easy. As it's not easy to find that the name of Alves dos Reis was in fact Alves Reis because everybody puts "dos". And I mean everybody. And yet...)
These are the numbers. All the rest is imagination and blind bets.
To discart the 275 000 as the population number, it is enough to look at the present numbers of cities population. (Not even Porto as that population  )
To discart numbers of victims like 90 000 it is enough to have comum sense. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gil Costa (talk • contribs).
Lisbon's current population is 504,718. About 2.9 million people currently live in the Lisbon metropolitan area. It is true that Porto has a current population less than 275,000, but that's not the population of Lisbon or of the area near Lisbon.
: Regarding the commas, please see Wikipedia's Manual of Style: they are perfectly acceptable, and generally help English readability.  Also please note that deductions from "common sense" and present population numbers are unacceptable here, as they consitute original research.  Since I didn't write this portion of the article, I don't know the source that was used, and a reference would be good to have, but I see no immediate reason to doubt that the number came from a historian's researched and published account. -- Rbellin|Talk 02:00, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added a source for somewhat different numbers, as noted above. -- Avenue (talk) 00:58, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Your source is for the population of Porto. That is not Lisbon.  2603:3003:100:5300:44A8:42B7:E21F:50F4 (talk) 14:00, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Numbers 

message: The entry on The Book of the Damned claims a perhaps supernatural disappearance of several hundred people from a shelter, found in 2006. It appears to be a reference to this , however the story is a rather more straightforward discovery of a mass grave. Can anyone shed any light? MartinSFSA (talk) 13:30, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing or dead? 

message: Intro states ' Geologists today estimate the Lisbon earthquake approached magnitude 9 on the Richter scale...'. Should there be a reference for this? Especially as the page on the Richter magnitude scale says the effective limit of measurement is about 6.8.
84.203.76.74 (talk) 22:04, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Earthquake magnitude 

message: A group of researchers associated with the University of Évora has been developing for the past 5 years a virtual recreation of Lisbon just before the 1755 earthquake (a project of virtual archeology), with several links to further documentation related to the architecture and culture of Baroque Lisbon, as well as pointers to more research done around the earthquake which is not mentioned in this Wiki page. This link has featured on this page on the past, but due to successive revisions, it was deleted.
I'll leave it here on the discussion page as a proposal for inclusion: http://lisbon-pre-1755-earthquake.org/
--Gwyneth Llewelyn (talk) 19:03, 29 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Virtual recreation of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake 

message: Interestingly, at least one paragraph of this article appears  practically verbatim in a published book: The Illustrated History of Natural Disasters
By Jan Kozák, Vladimir Cermák: http://books.google.com/books?id=JUcX4-WFxOYC&pg=PA132
(starting from "[Many of] of Lisbon's buildings were destroyed, including famous palaces and libraries, as well as most examples of Portugal's distinctive 16th-century Manueline architecture ...). However, the book is dated 2010, while this paragraph has been in the article since 2005, and has been gradually edited over time - while the text in the book  corresponds to its current (2010) version.  So most likely it is the book authors who have copied the text from here. -- Vmenkov (talk) 04:45, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of some of the article's text in a book 

message: During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!
* http://www.sthjournal.org/245/baptista.pdf
** In 1755 Lisbon earthquake on 2011-05-25 01:57:45, 404 Not Found
** In 1755 Lisbon earthquake on 2011-06-01 21:58:12, 404 Not Found
--JeffGBot (talk) 21:58, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead link 

message: In the infobox, why is the epicenter said to be Lisbon, when in fact it was over 200 miles away from that city? João Sousa (talk) 09:29, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Epicenter 

message: The in popular culture section, I mean really, do we need it?  Dbrodbeck (talk) 23:22, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed the content because it's not encyclopedic. Thanks, Dawnseeker2000  23:34, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do we really need the bit about Assassin's Creed? 

message: This reddit thread discusses the offending sentence. On July 26, 2012, an anonymous user added the sentence "Most philosophers rejected that on the grounds that the Alfama, Lisbon's red-light district, suffered only minor damage." in the "Effect on society and philosophy" section, referring to claims of divine origins of the earthquake. The redditor Tychocelchuuu and I were unable to find any references to this claim, except for articles that use this wikipedia page as a source. I suspect then that this claim was manufactured by the anonymous commentator, and I will thus remove it. My apologies for not doing this 7 months ago when I discovered the error - I hope not too many others have been spreading this claim!
Treating phimosis (talk) 01:15, 21 June 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference to red-light district has no evidence, possibly fabricated. 

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replies: text: The link was copied and pasted in the article improperly, therefore it was broken; now the link is fixed and its target document is available mysterienspiel (talk) 15:06, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: In the second paragraph of "Earthquake and tsunami" it claims that a third of the population of Cadiz was killed. In the Spanish version of the same article it states that Cadiz was mostly protected by its walls, and mentions only 15 victims. Neither article is cited, but with this discrepancy, I feel claiming a third of the population was killed could be misleading. But other regions of the Andalusian coast, like Ayamonte, did suffer substantial population casualties.
79.155.193.99 (talk) 08:44, 21 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cadiz Victims 

message: please show which Oxford-English-speaking nation you think the 1755 Lisbon earthquake has strong ties with, or revert your change of English variety, which I believe contravenes MOS:RETAIN. -- DeFacto (talk). 17:51, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Lisbon is in Portugal, and Portugal is a part of the EU. MOS:TIES says to use British English for EU-affiliated nations. Oxford English is a subset of British English, and it's easier to specifically invoke with the EngVarB script, so I just used that. If you'd rather I change it to general British English (i.e., with the more popular -ise spelling instead of -ize spelling), I can do that. However, the EU exclusively uses Oxford English as a matter of policy except for preferring the -ise spelling over the -ize spelling. So from WP's perspective, either British English or Oxford English would work for EU-related topics. Getsnoopy (talk) 20:44, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think you have misread or misunderstood MOS:TIES. It doesn't say "use British English for EU-affiliated nations". What it does do though, is suggest that articles with strong ties to the EU should use British or Irish English. So the question is this, does the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, which took place more than 230 years before Portugal joined the EU, have strong ties with the EU? I think not, so I think MOS:RETAIN should prevail here. -- DeFacto (talk). 21:46, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Ah, I understand your reasoning. That's a problematic argument, though, because it opens it up to discussion of whether a topic can be considered to have started to have strong ties to a nation based on the nation's history. Similarly, would you argue that all pre-Revolutionary War articles on British America should use British English based on strong ties, since the US wasn't a nation at that point and was a part of the British Empire? I think not. However, it's a lot simpler to hold the position (and in fact, MOS:TIES says) that topics have strong ties to nations, and that nation's variety is what should prevail. As such, the strong tie for the 1755 Lisbon earthquake is to Portugal, which (even though it wasn't a part of the EU back then) now has ties to the EU. Getsnoopy (talk) 22:15, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I disagree that Portugeuse history has any ties, let alone strong ones, to the EU. However, let's wait and see if others join in and you get a consensus then. In the meantime, perhaps you could restore the status-quo version of the article per BRD. -- DeFacto (talk). 22:25, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Per MOS:TIES, "An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation should use the [...] English of that nation." It's true that the topic of the Lisbon earthquake itself has no close ties to England, but in my opinion, all topics concerning Portugal should use British (or Oxford British) English, simply because Portugal has had close ties to England for over 630 years. This is the oldest alliance between two countries; these longstanding ties thus make it more appropriate to use British English than American English. Carlstak (talk) 23:08, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: , as you say, that earthquake has no strong ties with England (or the UK), and MOS:TIES requires the topic, not the country that it is associated with, to have the strong ties with an English-speaking country. The country that this topic has any ties with is Portugal, which isn't English-speaking. For that reason I think WP:RETAIN applies here, so American English should be used as it was used first. -- DeFacto (talk). 06:32, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

text:   Done. I think you've misunderstood what MOS:TIES is referring to. The strong ties are established with nations, as  correctly pointed out. The EU is not a nation, but a set of nations. It's true that the 1755 earthquake does not have strong ties to the EU; Lisbon and all events which have happened in it have always had a direct connection with Portugal, not the EU. It's Portugal that has strong ties with the EU, and thus qualifies for strong ties under MOS:TIES. Getsnoopy (talk) 05:37, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  firstly: thanks for the restoration, that makes article development more congenial. To the main point though, MOS:TIES is only concerned with whether the topic of the article itself has strong ties with an English-speaking country, and not whether any country it does have strong ties with has strong-ties with an English-speaking country. So the only thing we need to consider is whether the 1755 Lisbon earthquake has strong ties to an English-speaking country (or, apparently, with the EU). And as you say, the earthquake itself does not have strong ties with the EU, and neither does the earthquake have strong ties with any English-speaking country. -- DeFacto (talk). 06:46, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't think I worded my argument clearly, so allow me to clarify. The earthquake has strong ties to Portugal, which is an English-speaking nation insofar as  of its population speaks English as a first language, let alone as a second language. The latter is due to the fact that it's a part of the EU, and any English they use must be British/Oxford English. If Portugal can't be considered an English-speaking country by the fact that a third of their population speaks it as their first language (and probably many more as a second language), then surely India cannot be considered an English-speaking country either seeing as only 0.02% of the population speaks it as a first language; yet, India is specifically listed in the MOS:TIES list of countries. The reason I originally said "use British English for EU-affiliated nations" is because that's essentially what the policy amounts to. All EU nations are effectively English-speaking in that they have large English-speaking populations and English is an official language of the EU. Seeing as the EU mandates British/Oxford English, all articles which have strong ties to EU nations effectively have to use British/Oxford English. Getsnoopy (talk) 18:18, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  Portugal may have plenty of English-speakers, but it isn't an English-speaking nation by either of the normal definitions. English isn't an official language there and English isn't the majority first-language there. On the other hand, in India, English is one of the official languages. So, with respect to WP:TIES, I don't think that new argument holds any water either. -- DeFacto (talk). 18:54, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
replies: text:  As per the article you linked to:  Getsnoopy (talk) 05:33, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

text: I started a thread on this at WT:MOS. -- DeFacto (talk). 10:16, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  English variety 

message: "Portuguese towns in northern Africa were also affected by the earthquake, such as Ceuta and Mazagon"
Ceuta was already Spanish at the time of the earthquake.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.6.1.214 (talk) 21:04, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ceuta was not Portuguese. 

message: The 3rd para of section 'Earthquake and tsunami' states that "Shocks from the earthquake were felt throughout Europe as far as Finland and North Africa". I think 'North Africa' is a silly thing to say, given that the epicentre was virtually on the coast of North Africa. Whereas if the quake was felt in, say, Sudan, that would give a better feel for its range. Does anyone know from where this passage comes and/or to what it specifically refers? -- DoubleGrazing (talk) 13:48, 31 May 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  "As far as Finland and North Africa"