Abstract
ACCORDING to the Bureau central séismologique de Strasbourg, 120 earthquakes were felt by people or recorded by instruments during May 1939. Eight were registered on each of the first and last days, seven were registered on each of the sixth and fourteenth, and only one was registered on each of the seventh, fifteenth, eighteenth and twenty-ninth. The most severe shocks appear to have been those in the region of Akita, Japan, on the first, in California near 29·5° N., 113·8° W. on the second, in the Azores (scale 5 on the island of Santa Maria) on the eighth, in the monts d'Aubrac, France (scale 5) on the sixteenth, in the Adriatic on the twentieth, and at Kalncryta (Greece) where houses were cracked and the intensity reached 8 on the Rossi-Forel scale on the thirty-first, six in all. The last of these appears to have been the most intense. It was accompanied by a great noise and was followed by twenty-seven aftershocks, seven of which were strong. Next in order of intensity were those of the sixth, felt scale 4 at Calapan in the Philippines, the seventeenth with epicentre in the Pacific south of the Bonin Islands, the eighteenth felt scale 4 at Brig in the Jura bernoise, Switzerland, and the twenty-seventh at Birmanie near 25° N., 95° E. The moderately strong seismic activity in Italy appears to have been continued, shocks having been experienced during May near Romagna, Bologna, Pouilles and Isernia.
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Earthquakes during May 1939. Nature 144, 323–324 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/144323c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/144323c0