120 Years Ago: The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake
Today in 1906, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Northern California
At 5:12 am, 120 years ago today, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck the coast of North California. In San Francisco, the ensuing fire caused the most damage — more than 3,000 people died and over 80% of the city was destroyed. It remains the deadliest earthquake in U.S. history.
I’ve seen photos of the devastation, but while researching the quake for this newsletter, I stumbled across colorized versions, in this YouTube video:
Whoa. If it weren’t for the goofy hats, one might guess these photos were taken last week.
The colorized photos reminded me of the photo dating quiz from the data vis wizards at The Pudding:
The Pudding asks you to guess the date of a photo. Spoiler: All photos were originally taken in color, but were randomly presented in either color or black and white. (The project was inspired by a tweet from Beyonce’s set designer about civil rights-era photography.)
The experiment suggests a sort of historical distancing that happens with photography. In photos, the past looks farther away, and therefore less relevant. The artifacts of the camera skews our perception of time.
Which leads to a few pertinent questions: Do photos taken today contain the same artifacts of their making? Will photos taken with an iPhone in 2026 look like old-fashioned “iPhone photos” in 2046? Will our sense of history change if the “texture” of its capturing device erodes?
Is the past getting closer?
MORE ANNIVERSARIES
40 Years Ago Today: The movie Wise Guys (1986) premiered in theaters. A wise Letterboxd comment describes it as “What if Abbott and Costello were lowly henchmen in Mean Streets?” Director Brian De Palma himself called it “a movie I wish I hadn’t done.” The whole flick is free on YouTube.