All Saints’ Day, 0940 — The Disaster That Turned Lisbon Into Ash

Описание: #HistoryDoc #HistoryReborn #HistoryChannel
#lisbonearthquake #1755 #tsunami
How does one of Europe’s richest imperial capitals get nearly wiped off the map in a single morning—at 09:40 on All Saints’ Day, November 1st, 1755—and still leave behind questions we argue over today? An estimated major earthquake strikes Lisbon, followed by multiple tsunami waves racing into the Tagus, and then fires that burn for days, turning stone, timber, archives, and whole neighborhoods into a city-sized furnace.

As I traced eyewitness accounts, damage reports, and the uncomfortable gap between “what we know” and “what we only estimate,” a pattern emerged: this was not just a natural disaster—it was a turning point in how states and thinkers respond to catastrophe. Portugal’s leadership moves fast to restore order and relief, launches a nationwide questionnaire survey to quantify impacts, and rebuilds central Lisbon with grid planning and early anti-seismic engineering (often linked to the gaiola pombalina). Even the famous line “Bury the dead and feed the living” is frequently attributed to the Marquis of Pombal—yet the attribution itself becomes part of the story.

This investigation follows the disaster’s aftershocks beyond rubble: the debates over magnitude estimates (often modeled around Mw ~8.5–8.6, with a wider range proposed), the uncertainty in casualty figures (commonly summarized in the tens of thousands across Portugal–Spain–Morocco, depending on source), and the philosophical shockwave that hit the Enlightenment—Voltaire, Rousseau, and Kant wrestling with what suffering means in a world that claims to be rational. The deeper we look at Lisbon’s ruins and its reconstruction, the clearer it becomes: 1755 didn’t just break buildings—it changed the way Europe explained reality.

The material on this channel presents narrative-driven history with careful sourcing where possible, and clear uncertainty where the record is incomplete. Visual elements may at times be created using automated or generative tools. Some scenes are dramatized for storytelling and should not be treated as literal documentation.

#lisbonearthquake #1755 #tsunami #portugal #disasterhistory #earthquake #enlightenment