Question: What is the worst earthquake known to mankind?

Tim Craig answered on 11 Jun 2018:

This slightly depends on what you mean by worst. The largest earthquake in recent times was the 1960 Valdivia, Chile, earthquake, which is measured at a magnitude 9.5, but it didn’t cause as much damage as some others you might have heard of – the 2004 Sumatra earthquake (M9.1), the 2010 Haiti earthquake (M7.0) or the 2011 Japanese earthquake (M9.0), for example.

But the ‘deadliest’ earthquake humanity has experienced is believed to have been one in China in 1556 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1556_Shaanxi_earthquake). Its slightly hard to estimate exactly how bad this earthquake was – given it took place nearly 500 years ago, all we have to work with are historical records – but it is estimated to have caused over 800,000 casualties.