Views of the World, General View, Lisbon, Portugal

The great earthquake of 1755.  Lisbon is, of course, the capitol and largest city of present day Portugal.  On November 1, 1755, a massive earthquake estimated to be between 8.5 and 9 on the modern Movement Magnitude Scale, destroyed a large part of the city.  Just to make things worse, the epicenter was located under the ocean floor, so the quake was quickly followed by a 20 foot high tsunami.  But the disaster wasn't over.  As the waters receded, fires broke out burning much of what was left.  In all, 60,000 people out of an estimated population of 180,000 died.  That's one out of three for those who can't do the math.  Too, an estimated 12,000 dwellings were destroyed.

Time to leave this collection for awhile.  Click on Views of the World at the bottom of the post to see other cards in the series.

Views of the World, Fountain At Leiria, Portugal

Well, this is interesting.  I did the basic Google search trying to find something worth passing on about the city of Leiria.  Didn't find a lot.  Mostly that there's a castle on a hill, Portugal's only motion picture museum, and another museum dedicated to paper.  Leiria is home to Portugal's first paper mill.  Pretty dull stuff but then I started looking for images, and found this very postcard for sale....in Europe.  Then another, and another one after that all in Europe.  But the stamp block on the back mentions U.S. and Canadian postage rates.  So an American postcard of a European scene ends up in Europe.  The big question, were the cards in this series made for export?

Click on Views of the World in labels to see the rest.