Katrin Kleeman of the German Maritime Museum at the Leibniz Institute for Maritime History, will speak with the Massachusetts Historical Society on January 25 at 5:15 online, with comments by Lukas Rieppel of Brown University.
New England is more seismically active than most would expect. Several notable earthquakes shook the northeast in the past, such as in 1638, 1663, 1727, 1755, or 1783, to name but a few. In early America, earthquakes were rare enough, however, to be perceived as unusual events that contemporaries remarked upon them in their diaries, almanacks, sermons, and newspapers. Although clocks were still rare in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, diarists often gave a precise time when an earthquake struck—which varied, often, drastically from observer to observer. This allows for questions on how and how reliably time was kept.
The Environmental History Seminar invites you to join the conversation. Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and interested members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. Learn more.
Please note, this is an online event hosted on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive a confirmation message with attendance information. Register to attend online
