A 3.2 magnitude earthquake, recorded off Le Havre, sent rumbles through parts of Brighton on the afternoon of January 29 this year (2014).
For many of the city's residents, this might have been the first time the earth moved for them - seismically speaking, obviously... But it wasn't the area's first time - not by a long shot.
On October 24 1934, an earthquake shook many parts of Sussex, including Shoreham. Between November 30 1811 and August 3 1835, six separate quakes affected the Chichester region. A quake shook Brighton on April 1 1853 —the first recorded earthquake to be felt in the town. The tremors were felt over an area of 20,000 square miles.
Another quake occurred on August 13 1859 and then, on October 6 1863, where a man living in the Old Steine ‘heard a noise like the shutting of a door, which also shook the windows’. On August 21 1864, one of the worst shocks was felt throughout Sussex, from Brighton all the way to Battle. In 1863, a group of geologists said that ‘Brighton, and nearly all the southern coast towns are like the opposite shores of France, standing on the old ocean bottom, elevated out of their level by an earthquake, and might be shaken back by it’.
Around the world, underwater earthquakes have been responsible for devastating tsunamis - most notably, those that occurred on Boxing Day 2004 off the coast of Sumatra and, in March 2011, off the Pacific coast of Tohoku, Japan.
And, if you think it a tsunami couldn't happen here on the south cast, I have news for: it already has...
You can find out more about this in The New Encyclopaedia of Brighton: http://www.rosecollis.com/books/new-encyclopedia-of-brighton/
Available on www.amazon.co.uk
