On December 16th 1811, the residents of New Madrid, Missouri, were startled out of their beds by a huge earthquake, which was quickly followed by a second. Those who survived the catastrophe reported that cracks opened in the earth's surface, that the ground rolled visibly in waves and that large areas of land sank downwards. The crew of the New Orleans, the first steamboat to ply the Mississippi, told locals that they had moored on an island the evening before the earthquake only to discover that it was gone in the morning. People in places as far away as Boston declared that they heard church bells ringing at the time the earthquake happened.
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