Earthquake Kills Hundreds Of Turks.

New York Times 100 years ago today, August 11, 1912:

Several European Towns Are Wiped Out by the Shock or Consumed by Flames.

UPHEAVAL IS WIDESPREAD

Ships In the Dardanelles Shaken — Homeless and Wounded Pour Into Constantinople.

    CONSTANTINOPLE, Aug. 10.— Several towns were practically destroyed and hundreds of persons killed by yesterday's earthquake, as shown by meagre reports that are now reaching this city. Thousands have been made homeless either by the destruction of their homes by the shock or by the fires that followed the upheaval.
    The seismic disturbance was widespread, and the breaking down of the telegraphic wires prevents ascertaining the full particulars.
    The entire district between Constantinople and Adrianople felt the shock severely.
    Fugitives from Myriophito report 300 killed and 600 injured. The town was burning when they left.
    Ganos-Hora has been wiped out, eighty persons being killed and thirty wounded. The wrecked buildings took fire, and most of them were burned to the ground.
    Shar-Koi was completely destroyed, and two nearby villages were engulfed.
    Adrianople suffered little damage, but Tchorlu was partially destroyed by the earthquake and fire,
    The centre of the disturbance seems to have been in the region of the Dardanelles. Eye-witnesses have arrived from that section, and many are being treated in hospitals. They give harrowing accounts of the havoc wrought.
    Most of the houses in Gallipoli are in ruins and the people are camping in the fields. Tchanak-Kalessi is in an equally bad plight, but the loss of life in these towns is small, although the injured are many.
    All the villages on the Sea of Marmora, and especially those on the southern shore, suffered greatly, and many persons were killed or injured.
    The inhabitants of several villages are homeless and without food of any kind. A special steamer has been chartered and a torpedo boat has been ordered to their relief.
    Telegraphic communication with the Dardanelles was interrupted, but reports received by wireless telegraphy stated that the Greek Consulate was destroyed.
    The shock was felt on warships anchored in the Dardanelles, and was at first attributed to Italian torpedo boats.
    The Captain of the American steamer Virginia reports that the lighthouse at Ganos-Hora, in the Sea of Marmora, has disappeared, and that the villages in the surrounding country are in flames. He was unable to anchor and render assistance owing to the violent movement of the sea.
    Another slight earthquake shock was felt here this morning.

    Earthquakes, causing great loss of life, have been the curse of the Eastern Mediterranean region ever since the dawn of recorded history. The greatest catastrophies in the annals of the human race have occurred in this region as the result of seismic disturbances.
    An analysis of the earthquake shocks of the world during the last fifty years shows that this region has maintained its record as a centre of upheavals. During that period this region had nearly half of the recorded earthquake shocks of the world, 47,000 out of 103,000.
    Antioch, in Asia Minor, on the site of which one of the cities, destroyed yesterday, was built, was a greater sufferer from earthquake shock than any other city of antiquity. Four times it was wrecked by earthquakes. In 113 B.C., during a celebration in honor of the Emperor Trajan, and when the city was thronged, an earthquake shook it and thousands of the celebrating throng were killed, including many Romans of distinction. Trajan himself escaped by climbing out of the debris of his palace. In 526 B.C. the streets of Antioch literally opened, and 250,000 were killed in the greatest earthquake catastrophe ever known.
    Down to the great Sicilian and Calabrian earthquake of 1908, in which 100,000 persons lost their lives, the Eastern Mediterranean region held its evil record. In 1137 Sicily was desolated with the loss of 15,000 lives. Syria in 1158 lost 20,000 inhabitants in a similar calamity. About 60,000 persons were killed in Cicilia in 1268. At Naples in 1456 40,000 were killed. The same city lost 70,000 by earthquake in 1626. Sicily was devastated in 1693 with the loss of 100,000 lives. Algiers in 1731 lost 20,000 by earthquake. Forty thousand perished in an earthquake in Persia in 1755. In 1783 Sicily and Messina lost 20,000 in another catastrophe. Persia suffered a loss of 12,000 from an earthquake in 1893.