D) We only hear about earthquakes in the news every once in a while, but they are actually an everyday occurrence on our planet. According to the United States Geological Survey, more than 3 million earthquakes occur every year. Thats about 8,000 a day, or one every 11 seconds! The vast majority of these 3 million quakes are extremely weak. The law of probability also causes a good number of stronger quakes to happen in uninhabited places where no one feels them. It is the big
quakes that occur in highly populated areas that get our attention.
E) Earthquakes have caused a great deal of property damage over the years, and they have claimed many lives. In the last hundred years alone, there have been more than 1.5 million earthquake-related fatalities. Usually, its not the shaking ground itself that claims lives; its the associated destruction of man-made structures and other natural disasters it causes, such as tsunamis, avalanches and landslides.
F) The biggest scientific breakthrough in the history of seismologythe study of earthquakescame in the middle of the 20th century, with the development of the theory of plate tectonics.Scientists proposed the idea of plate tectonics to explain a number of peculiar phenomena on earth, such as the apparent movement of continents over time, the clustering of volcanic activity in certain areas and the presence of huge ridges at the bottom of the ocean.
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