Of all the calamities Britain had to face, earthquakes were rarely among them. The British isles lie in a low seismicity zone, making even moderate earthquakes an unusual event. In the country’s long history nothing stronger than a 6.1 magnitude quake has ever been recorded, and even that was deep underground and out at the North Sea. The British settlers who moved to Boston, Massachusetts were not as lucky, as they soon found out.

On this day, June 1, in 1638 a large tremor struck the Boston area, scaring residents “reeling like drunken men, with ghastly countenances, to the first group of people they could find, for men like many animals will flock together when they are afraid,” according to one contemporary report.

The quake was later estimated a magnitude 6.5 to 7.0, about the same size as the one that leveled a third of San Francisco in 1906. The residents did not even have the words to describe what they witnessed: William Bradford, the Governor of the Pilgrims’ Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts wrote in his diary “It came with a rumbling noise or low murmur, like unto remote thunder. … [A]s the noise approached nearer, the earth began to shake and came at length with that violence as caused platters, dishes and suchlike things as stood upon shelves, to clatter and fall down. Yea, persons were afraid of the houses themselves.”