Earthquake devastates Gansu province

1138

A catastrophic earthquake struck the border region between the Southern Song and the Western Xia empires in the loess highlands of present-day Gansu province. Massive landslides dammed rivers, buried entire villages under hundreds of feet of earth, and killed tens of thousands of people in one of the deadliest seismic events of the entire medieval era. Aftershocks continued to rumble for months across the shattered plateau.