1976 Tangshan Earthquake

A magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the industrial city of Tangshan in Hebei Province, China, at 3:42 in the morning on 28 July 1976, with almost no warning. Within minutes an estimated 85 percent of the city's buildings collapsed or were rendered unusable, and shaking reached a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI. The government's official death toll of 242,469 is disputed by historians who, cross-checking government files, put the true figure at 300,000 or more, making it the deadliest earthquake of the twentieth century and the deadliest in recorded history apart from the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake's added famine deaths.