The Great Formosa Tsunami Mystery – Snack 06

The disaster was so terrible, so deadly that shocking reports of it reached as far away as Europe; they claimed that in 1782, Taiwan had been devastated by a colossal tsunami. Some accounts said the island had almost disappeared beneath the sea and that 40,000 people had died. Yet strangely, Chinese records seemed to say almost nothing about it. In this snack episode, Eryk and John put on their white coats and get scientific; or, in other words, they use some recent groundbreaking academic papers to explain one of the greatest mysteries in Taiwan’s history. Was there really a massive tsunami on Taiwan’s southwest coast in the 1780s? Listen and learn.