Earthquake...Yikes.

(4) It’s the biggest earthquake to hit the East Coast since the 1890s—there was a 5.9 in 1897 in Virginia—and the third-largest since the USGS started keeping records; a 7.3 in 1886 in Charleston, South Carolina was the strongest.

(5) Judging from preliminary USGS data, the quake was unusually shallow—about 6 kilometers below the surface—which may explain why the shaking was so dramatic.

(6) Additionally, the texture of the Earth’s crust on the East Coast may partly explain why shaking was felt so far away

(7) In the storm of tweets that went out after the quake, @Stanford noted that Boston is actually at a higher risk of devastating quakes than San Francisco. While the city by the bay obviously has more and more severe quakes, the city is better prepared; Boston has more old buildings, constructed before modern earthquake codes went into effect.

(8) The epicenter was not far from the North Anna nuclear power plant, operated by Dominion Power. Following an automated protocol, the plant’s two reactors safely went offline when the quake struck, reports AOLEnergy