All Saints' Day
Description:
On the first of November 1755, at 9:20 a.m., a terrible disaster struck Lisbon. The city was literally thrown into ruins by an earthquake, then washed away by a powerful tsunami and finally burned by the ensuing fire.
The main jolt shook the ground for several minutes, followed by a brief pause, and after it there were two more tremors. Then it turned out that the sea retreated, exposing huge shoals, and from afar rose to 15 m high tsunami wave, covering the city for a few minutes. The epicenter of an earthquake measuring about 9 on the Richter scale was in the Atlantic Ocean.
After the tragedy survived only the old district of Alfama, built in the years of Arab rule (the name comes from the word "al-ham", which means "hot" - there are warm springs). The center of the city, Baisha ("Lower"), the only part of the city not lying on a hill, was soon rebuilt.
The old streets were not restored, but built new ones, exclusively at right angles. Most of them received names by the names of various professions - "Sapateiros" - "Cobblers", "Kureusz" - "Postmans", "Doradorish" - "Goldeners", etc.
This event was widely discussed by European philosophers of the Enlightenment, in addition, it served as the impetus for the birth of the science of seismology. Voltaire described the Lisbon catastrophe in Candida: They felt the earth beneath them tremble. The sea in the harbor boiled and destroyed the ships anchored. Whirlwinds of fire and ash engulfed the streets and squares. Houses began to collapse. Thirty thousand men and women were buried under the rubble. In horror Candide stood, shaking with fear and confusion.
And according to encyclopedic sources, the death toll ranged from 60 to more than 100 thousand people.