Blaming people for earthquakes

I've just been quoted in an interesting article from Newsweek (for link, see below) about the dangers that human activities such as fracking might cause earthquakes.

I talk about two quakes - the first hit Antioch in what is now Turkey, but was then one of the biggest cities in the Roman empire, in AD 115. It nearly killed the emperor Trajan and the future emperor, Hadrian, commissioner of the famous wall.

Trajan believed it had happened because the spread of Christianity had made the old Roman gods angry, so he had the local bishop thrown to wild animals at the Colosseum in Rome. An estimated 300,000 people died in another earthquake in Antioch in 526, after which the city never recovered its former greatness.

The other earthquake I mention is the one that hit Lisbon, then the centre of a great global empire, on November 1 - All Saints' Day - 1755 (pictured). After the quake, fires burned for six days, destroying 85 per cent of the city including scores of convents, 30 monasteries, many churches and the headquarters of the Inquisition. The red light district emerged unscathed, to the amusement of many in Protestant countries.

For more details on both, see A Disastrous History of the World.

This is the Newsweek story - http://www.newsweek.com/2014/08/29/man-made-earthquakes-are-proliferating-we-wont-admit-fault-266531.html

Concorde crash trial + Haiti update

In France, Continental Airlines and five individuals have gone on trial over the Concorde crash at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport on July 25, 2000. The aircraft came down on the nearby town of Gonesse, killing four people on the ground and all 109 passengers and crew on board. It was the only fatal accident the supersonic airliner was ever involved in, but it never recovered, and was retired from service in 2003.

An investigation concluded that one of Concorde’s tyres had burst after it hit a piece of metal left on the runway by a Continental DC-10. Debris from the tyre then ruptured a fuel tank, which made the airliner burst into flames. Continental denies this, and claims that Concorde had caught fire before it hit the metal.

Among the individuals facing manslaughter charges alongside Continental are one of its mechanics and a maintenance official, as well as Concorde’s former chief engineer, a former head of the Concorde division at Aerospatiale and a former member of France’s civil aviation watchdog.

** I’ve been quoted by Newsweek in an article on the Haiti earthquake and its aftermath. The link is http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/wealthofnations/archive/2010/01/25/why-haiti-is-without-parallel.aspx