Tangshan Earthquake

July 28, 1976

At 3:42 in the morning, a magnitude-7.5 earthquake leveled the industrial city of Tangshan in northern China. Official figures said 242,000 dead; the real toll may have exceeded 650,000. Mao Zedong, dying himself, refused foreign aid. The earthquake was the deadliest of the twentieth century and exposed the fragility behind China's revolutionary facade.