Taylor Swift, Earthquakes, and Land Mines (opens in new tab)

At 12:51pm on February 22, 2011, the world crumbled before the residents of Christchurch, New Zealand. A magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit the city, killing 185 people and injuring thousands more. This earthquake was an aftershock of the more severe but far less deadly 7.1 magnitude earthquake that hit the region six months earlier on September 4, 2010. An aftershock is a typically mini (in this case, not so mini) earthquake that occurs in response to added pressure being placed on nearby rocks as...