What’s the largest earthquake ever recorded? What was the geologic setting for this whopper?

Question

What’s the largest earthquake ever recorded? What was the geologic setting for this whopper?

Answer 1

Egypt and Syria, 1201

The deadliest earthquake in history hit the eastern Mediterranean in July 1201. Approximately 1.1 million people were killed, mostly in Egypt and Syria.

Answer 2

The largest earthquake recorded since 1900 was a 9.5 on 1960 May 22 19:11:14 UTC in Chile.  It was a subduction zone earthquake.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/worl...

The USGS has a page devoted to cataloging this information, including historical earthquakes back to the 800s AD.  It's very interesting.  Check it out:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/eqar...

(BTW - the USGS lists no earthquake for 1201, let alone one that killed over a million people, so I e-mailed them about it to see if it's true.)

Answer 3

A few of the largest by intensity and not necessarily human impact:

San Francisco - 1906

New Madrid - 1811-1812

Alaska - 1964

Alaska registered a magnitude over 9.0 and is the strongest one I know of although very few people were killed due to the small population.