Abstract
AT 11.58 a.m. (G.M.T.) on June 11, an earthquake of unusual severity was felt all over Belgium and Holland, in the south-west of Germany, the north-east of France and the south-east of England. From the early accounts, the intensity of the shock seems to have been greatest in the west of Belgium, where buildings were slightly damaged, several persons were injured and one was killed. In France, it was most severe in the district around Lille, where many chimneys were thrown down, and at Roubaix, close to the Belgian frontier, where about twenty persons were injured. It was felt also at Boulogne and Paris and, it is said, at Strasbourg. It was observed all over Holland, though but slightly in the north and east of that country. In the south-east of England, especially in Kent, the earthquake was felt rather strongly and also at places so far from the origin as London, Ipswich and Brighton. The disturbed area must therefore have been at least 380 miles long from east to west and 330 miles wide, and have contained not less than 100,000 square miles. It is difficult at present to assign the position of the epicentre. It may have been under the North Sea near the coast of Belgium, or on land in the west of that country. The earthquake was clearly of less intensity than that of April 6, 1580, but, though many of the places disturbed by both shocks are the same, its epicentre must have lain some distance to the east of that of the earlier earthquake, which, as Mr. E. R. Ockenden has shown (NATURE, 138, 472 ; 1936) was probably submarine and near the east coast of Kent.
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Earthquake of June 11. Nature 141, 1090 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/1411090a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1411090a0