This article lists notable tsunamis, which are sorted by the date and location that the tsunami occurred. Because of seismic and volcanic activity associated with tectonic plate boundaries along the Pacific Ring of Fire, tsunamis occur most frequently in the Pacific Ocean, but are a worldwide natural phenomenon. They are possible wherever large bodies of water are found, including inland lakes, where they can be caused by landslides and

glacier calving Ice calving, also known as glacier calving or iceberg calving, is the breaking of ice chunks from the edge of a glacier.Essentials of Geology, 3rd edition, Stephen Marshak It is a form of ice ablation or ice disruption. It is the sudden release ...

. Very small tsunamis, non-destructive and undetectable without specialized equipment, occur frequently as a result of minor earthquakes and other events. Around 1600 BC, a tsunami caused by

the eruption ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in En ...

of Thira devastated the

Minoan civilization The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, whose earliest beginnings were from 3500BC, with the complex urban civilization beginning around 2000BC, and then declining from 1450BC ...

on Crete and related cultures in the Cyclades, as well as in areas on the Greek mainland facing the eruption, such as the Argolid. The oldest recorded tsunami occurred in

479 BC __NOTOC__ Year 479 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Vibulanus and Rutilus (or, less frequently, year 275 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 479 BC for this year has ...

. It destroyed a Persian army that was attacking the town of

Potidaea __NOTOC__ Potidaea (; grc, Ποτίδαια, ''Potidaia'', also Ποτείδαια, ''Poteidaia'') was a colony founded by the Corinthians around 600 BC in the narrowest point of the peninsula of Pallene, the westernmost of three peninsulas at ...

in Greece.Smid, T. C.: "'Tsunamis' in Greek Literature", ''Greece & Rome'', 2nd Ser., Vol. 17, No. 1 (April 1970), pp. 100–04 (102f.) As early as 426 BC, the Greek historian Thucydides inquired in his book '' History of the Peloponnesian War'' (3.89.1–6) about the causes of tsunamis. He argued that such events could only be explained as a consequence of ocean earthquakes, and could see no other possible causes. Thucydides
"A History of the Peloponnesian War", 3.89.1–5

Prehistoric

Before 1001 CE

1000–1700 CE

1700s

1800s

1900–1950

1950–2000

2000-2010

2011-2020

2021-present

Highest or tallest

* The tsunami with the highest runup was the

1958 Lituya Bay megatsunami The 1958 Lituya Bay earthquake occurred on PST with a moment magnitude of 7.8 to 8.3 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (''Extreme''). The strike-slip earthquake took place on the Fairweather Fault and triggered a rockslide of 30 million ...

, which had a record height of . * The only other ''recent'' megatsunamis are the 1963 Vajont Dam megatsunami, which had an initial height of , the 1980 Spirit Lake megatsunami, which measured tall, and the 2015 megatsunami in Taan Fiord, a finger of Icy Bay in Alaska, which had an estimated initial height of and a run-up of . * A tsunami caused by a landslide during the

1964 Alaska earthquake The 1964 Alaskan earthquake, also known as the Great Alaskan earthquake and Good Friday earthquake, occurred at 5:36 PM AKST on Good Friday, March 27.

reached a height of , making it one of the largest tsunamis in recorded history.

Deadliest

The deadliest tsunami in recorded history was the

2004 Indian Ocean tsunami An earthquake and a tsunami, known as the Boxing Day Tsunami and, by the scientific community, the Sumatra–Andaman earthquake, occurred at 07:58:53 local time (UTC+7) on 26 December 2004, with an epicentre off the west coast of northern Suma ...

, which killed almost 230,000 people in fourteen countries including (listed in order of confirmed fatalities) Indonesia,

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

, India, Thailand, Somalia,

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

, Maldives, Malaysia, Tanzania, Seychelles, Bangladesh, South Africa, Yemen and Kenya.

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

External links

* Tinti S., Maramai A., Graziani L. (2007)
''The Italian Tsunami Catalogue (ITC)''
Version 2 (Windows software database) {{DEFAULTSORT:Historic Tsunamis Articles containing video clips