The Day the Earth Shook: Lisbon, 1755

HOST (ALEX): This is Alex, reporting live from what remains of Lisbon, Portugal. The date is November 1st, 1755. All Saints' Day. The air here is thick—choking thick—with lime dust and the acrid smell of burning timber. Just hours ago, this was one of the wealthiest, most pious cities in Europe, the jewel of the Portuguese Empire. Now... it is a graveyard. I’m standing near the ruins of the Carmo Convent. The roof is gone. It collapsed around 9:40 this morning, right in the middle of High Mass, crushing hundreds of worshippers beneath the stones. And this is just the beginning of the nightmare.

HOST: It was a triple strike. First, the earth itself seemed to liquefy. Survivors tell me the shaking lasted an eternity—six minutes of violent convulsions that opened fissures five meters wide in the city center. But for those who fled the falling masonry and ran to the open safety of the Tagus River docks, a second horror awaited.

HOST: I’m walking now toward the Terreiro do Paço, the Royal Square. The water here... it’s calm now, but earlier, witnesses described a sight that defied logic. The river didn't just recede; it was sucked away. The Tagus bottom was laid bare—shipwrecks, lost cargo, and mud exposed to the sky. And then, the ocean came back. A wall of water, estimated at six meters high, surged up the river, swallowing the very people who had sought refuge from the falling buildings.

HOST: Sitting on a pile of shattered marble near the quay is Francisco, a merchant who deals in Brazilian sugar. He’s covered in gray dust, staring blankly at a ship that has been hurled halfway up the street.

HOST: Francisco, can you tell us what you saw when the water retreated?

FRANCISCO: (Voice trembling, hollow) I thought it was the End of Days. Truly. I was down here checking a shipment... when the ground threw us off our feet. I looked to the river... and the water... it fled. As if the sea itself was afraid of the land. We saw old anchors, bones... things that should never see the sun. I heard men screaming that a dragon was drinking the river. But then... it returned. Not like a tide. Like a mountain of green glass. It took my warehouse. It took... (He pauses, choking back emotion) ...it took everything.

HOST: Francisco, up on the hill, I can see smoke rising from the churches. The fires are spreading.

FRANCISCO: It is the candles. It is All Saints' Day. Every altar, every shrine... thousands of votive candles were lit for the souls of the dead. When the walls fell, the candles fell with them. Now the curtains, the wood, the tapestries... the city is burning from the inside out. They say this is God’s wrath, that we have sinned. But... (He gestures to a ruined church) ...if this is judgment, why destroy the churches? Why crush the faithful while they pray? The brothels on the dirty streets... some of them still stand. But the House of God is rubble. What kind of logic is this?

HOST: As night approaches, the glow of the fires is turning the sky a bruised purple. This catastrophe will likely birth a new way of understanding our world—a shift from superstition to science, the very beginning of seismology. But for tonight, for Francisco and the thousands of survivors huddled in the hills, there is only the smoke, the dust, and the silence of a city that has ceased to exist. Reporting live from 1755 Lisbon, I’m Alex.