re: Interesting historical pictures thread (add captions please)

At 5:12 A.M. on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, an earthquake woke up residents of San Francisco and tossed them from their beds. Little did they know that it was going to be one of the deadliest natural disasters in the history of the United States.

The earthquake itself only lasted about 45 seconds, but it was estimated to have been between 7.8 and 8.3 on the Richter scale, which wasn't invented until 1935. When the earth stopped shaking, few people realized that San Francisco's cataclysm had only just begun. Almost immediately, downed power lines, broken gas lines, and damaged chimneys ignited widespread fires. Worse, the quake had cracked the city's massive clay water mains, leaving firefighters virtually without water.