Between Despair and Hope: The 1755 Earthquake in Lisbon

In November 2005, Lisbon will recall a momentous event in its history: two hundred and fifty years before, a powerful earthquake (estimated magnitude of 9 using the Mercali scale) ruined most of its city centre, killed a significant number of its inhabitants and curtailed its wealth and its historical legacy. The scale of the seismic shocks and the damage it caused in the capital city were cause of bewilderment and astonishment not only in Portugal but also everywhere in Europe. Newspapers rapidly developed throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries benefiting from an increasing number of readers interested in what was happening all over Europe as well as in other regions of the recently “discovered” world (which had gradually been incorporated in the “known world” by the imperial expansion of the European nations). Apart from being a source of wide-ranging information at a time when the means were scarce and the demand was rising, the most renowned newspapers were used to swiftly and thoroughly assist the cultural and scientific European elite and, more specifically, to keep the European commercial and financial network up to date. The Lisbon earthquake made the European newspapers’ headlines for several months not only due to its dramatic consequences but also because of its commercial and political implications. Let us examine the catastrophe and its repercussions on European society at the time in greater detail.

European Review, 2006

The Lisbon earthquake is famous for its central role in the 18th century ‘quarrel of Optimism’. The accounts of the disaster by some witnesses are presented and the contributions that the earthquake inspired to many European authors, less well-known than Voltaire, in the domains of science, literature, religion and philosophy, are summarily reviewed. The paper emphasizes the repercussions the earthquake had in Germany, quite remote from the disaster area, but intellectually much alive, at the time of Frederic II.

2001

On November 1, 1755, the city of Lisbon was completely devastated by the combined effect of a tremendous earthquake, tsunami waves, and fire. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake was the most destructive cataclysm recorded in western Europe since the Roman Republic, with an estimated earthquake magnitude Mw ˜8.5 [Martins and Mendes Victor, 1990] and estimated tsunami magnitude of Mt= Mw= 8.5. The earthquake was felt as far away as Great Britain and Finland. The tsunami hit many coastal cities along southwest Iberia and North Africa, causing heavy destruction in Tanger and Casablanca.

Earth Sciences History, 2007

*School of History and Philosophy, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales 2072, Australia ([email protected]) **Departamento de Ciencias Exactas e Technológicas, Universidade Alberta, Rua de Escola Politécnica No. 147, 1250 Lisboa, ...

https://servicioskoinonia.org/relat/450.htm

Extracto de su libro «Is Jesus God? Finding our faith». En un libro mío que escribí hace un tiempo, "Tomorrow's Catholic: Understandig God and Jesus in a New Millenium" (El católico de mañana. Comprender a Dios y a Jesús en el nuevo milenio, colección «Tiempo axial» nº 15), trataba de poner en un lenguaje sencillo la crítica actual a la cosmovisión en la que ha sido presentada la fe tradicional. También trataba de mostrar cómo el mensaje de Jesús tiene un atractivo universal para la gente que sabe que vive en un universo con millones y millones de galaxias y en continua expansión. En marzo de 1998, el arzobispo católico de Melbourne prohibió que se vendiera el libro en su arquidiócesis, advirtiendo que contenía "serios errores doctrinales", y me prohibió hablar en público sobre los temas de la encarnación, la redención y la Trinidad. El arzobispo me presentó un documento de diez páginas que subrayaba mis "serios errores doctrinales". El documento se basaba en citas del Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica y contenía la acusación de que yo había "malinterpretado la doctrina católica". Mis esfuerzos por reflexionar la creencia popular según la cual Dios de alguna forma cambió de actitud y de práctica hacia nosotros gracias a la muerte de Jesús, fue etiquetada como una "parodia", a pesar de que utilicé citas del Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica para demostrar que esa idea está también allí... https://servicioskoinonia.org/relat/450.htm

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2020

Resources for suppletion: a typological database and a bibliography, 2016

The phenomenon of suppletion, as found in English go~went where different inflectional forms of the same lexical item are not related phonologically, has a special place in morphology. Part of its importance is that it sets one of the outer bounds for the notion ‘possible word’ in a human language. It provokes questions about how such forms are to be treated in our theories, and how they are stored (Carstairs-McCarthy 1994). There has been considerable work on suppletion, particularly from Osthoff (1899) onwards. Current interest in the topic is shown by the recent appearance of two dissertations (Veselinova 2003 and Veselinovič 2003). While the body of research is extensive, the range of languages investigated is rather restricted in many publications. In order to stimulate further progress, we have constructed and made available a database (Brown, Chumakina, Corbett and Hippisley 2004). We hope this will help to put future research on a broader empirical base An annotated bibliography is now available (Chumakina 2004); it contains over seventy entries on works written in five different languages (English, French, German, Italian and Russian) and this will give the reader a view of the literature.

Annals of General Psychiatry, 2012

The topic of sexual obsessions as a psychiatric symptom has not been well investigated. The aim of this study was twofold: 1) to explore the presence of sexual obsessions in patients with mood disorders (n=156), panic disorder (n=54) and schizophrenia (n=79), with respect to non-psychiatric subjects (n=100); 2) to investigate the relationship between sexual obsessions and suicidal behaviors, taking into account socio-demographic variables ad mental disorders. Methods: 289 psychiatric patients with mood disorders, panic disorder or schizophrenia, were recruited at the Italian University departments of psychiatry along with 100 non-psychiatric subjects, who presented for a routine eye exam at the ophthalmology department of the same Universities. The assessments included: the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR, the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), the Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Self-Report (OBS-SR), for sexual obsession, and the Mood Spectrum-Self Report lifetime version (MOODS-SR). Suicidality was assessed by means of 6 items of the MOODS-SR. Results: Sexual obsessions were more frequent in schizophrenia (54.4%), followed by mood disorders (35.9%). Among schizophrenia patients, males reported more sexual obsessions than females (P<0.01). Subjects who were more likely to report suicidal behaviors (suicidal ideation, plans and attempts) were female (adjusted OR=1.99), patients with mental disorders, specifically mood disorders (adjusted OR=11.5), schizophrenia (adjusted OR=3.7) or panic disorder (adjusted OR=2.9), and subjects who reported lifetime sexual obsessions (adjusted OR= 3.6). Sexual obsessions remained independently associated with all aspects of suicidal behaviors. Age, education, marital and employment status were not related to suicidal behaviors.