The Largest Recorded Tsunami Was 50 Years Ago

An anonymous reader writes "July marks the 50th anniversary of the world's largest tsunami — a 1,720-foot-tall wave in Lituya Bay, Alaska. It was triggered by a chain reaction of events that began with a magnitude 7.7 earthquake on the Fairweather Fault, which dislodged a rock fall of 40 million cubic yards, that fell 3,000 feet and splashed into the northwest end of Lituya Bay to generate the wave. This article includes survivor accounts, maps, a satellite image, and photos taken right after the event." To be fair, eyewitness accounts put the height of the wave as it came toward their boats at perhaps 100 feet. The tsunami scoured the land of vegetation and soil to a height of 1,720 feet above sea level, however.

Comments

Re:Feet and yards?

[Thelasko]

We tried, we even have the metric conversion act of 1975. There are simply too many people who resist change and can't do the math in their head. I understand the difficulties with Fahrenheit to Celsius, but it isn't hard to multiply a pound by 2.2. You can even round it to 2 if you had to.

I used to work in a factory that was owned by a German company, but located in the US. If I would give a drawing labeled in milimeters to our machinists they would balk at it, and I would have to go back and convert it to inches. We had a visiting machinist from Germany and I accidentally gave him a drawing in milimeters to use with our mill which was in inches. Realizing my mistake I offered to correct the drawing. He simply asked what the conversion was. I told him 25.4 mm/in and he came back a little while later with a perfectly machined part.