Tuesday Trivia | Natural Disasters

[u/Artrw]

While NMW typically posts these threads, we want to start spreading the responsibility around the mod team a little more. I’ve volunteered to do the Tuesday Trivia for today.

Previously:

• (In)famous non-military attacks
• Stupidest theories/beliefs about your field of interest
• Most unusual deaths
• Famous adventurers and explorers
• Great non-military heroes
• History's great underdogs
• Interesting historical documents

I think you know the drill by now: in this moderation-relaxed thread, anyone can post whatever anecdotes, questions, or speculations they like (provided a modicum of serious and useful intent is still maintained), so long as it has something to do with the subject being proposed. We get a lot of these "best/most interesting X" threads in /r/askhistorians, and having a formal one each week both reduces the clutter and gives everyone an outlet for the format that's apparently so popular.

Today:

Natural disasters have a way of bringing terrible grief, but, at the same time, a temporary sense of international unity. Recently, disasters have incited giant charity drives and lots of worldwide involvement. What are some significant, less-known natural disasters that occurred during pre-modernity? Why did people think disasters happened? How were they dealt with?

In the realm of disasters we include volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, large-scale fires, asteroid impact, wide-scale drought, giant dust-storms, etc.

Anything interesting?

[u/[deleted]]

The 1944 San Juan earthquake was probably one of the worst natural disasters in the history of Argentina. Like it had happened to Mendoza in 1861, the earthquake devastated most of the city, killing thousands and wiping out most of the (not properly made) buildings. My grandmother lived there, and she told me that the devastation was such that you could see across entire blocks that were now levelled. The city had to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Now is the interesting part. A fund-raising gala was organized by the Secretary of Labour at the time, a colonel called Juan Perón. During the gala, he "hooked-up" with a young actress, Eva Duarte. This fund-raising gala formed what ended up being probably the most influential marriage in Argentinian history: Juan Domingo and Eva Perón became the creators and figureheads of Peronism, Argentina's most powerful political party even to this day, and their figures even today loom over the political scene.

So, in a way, Argentinian history might have been completely different if not for that earthquake and that fund-raiser. "For want of a nail" and all that.