The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1 September 1923, Which Burned Tokyo and Killed 105,000 People
At 11:58 on 1 September 1923, two minutes before noon, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the Tokyo-Yokohama region as the city's lunch fires were lit. Firestorms did most of the killing — including some 38,000 people incinerated by a fire whirl at a single open square. Around 105,000 died; in the chaos, mobs massacred thousands of Koreans.
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